Interplanetary Missiles

An idea for an alternate approach to warfare

from GalCiv2 Forums
So, this is something I'd really like to see: The ability to build "Interplanetary Missile Silo" improvements on planets.

This improvement would allow the planet to (with some kind of firing cost/delay between shots) fire missiles at other worlds (possibly with some kind of range limit, but it would have to be a big range to be useful; maybe upgraded levels of the improvement with stronger missiles/better range?). The missiles would move across the galaxy map at a certain speed, on auto-pilot towards their target, and could not be given orders. Upon reaching the target planet, the missile would impact, killing some amount of the population, destroying improvements, and possible reducing PQ.

Countering the missiles would involve sending ships to attack and destroy them mid-flight.

Of course, to be useful, the missiles would have to be resistant enough to being shot down to have a chance of hitting, but weak enough that you can't freely strike at well-defended planets. One possibility is to make them relatively fast, so only ships would good engines would be able to intercept them. You could also give them some level of weapons to defend themselves.

Alternatively, you could make them "Cloaked", and only detected if they came within a short range of something, or possibly only detected by Starbases with a certain level of sensor upgrades, and by ships with Survey modules (since I am all for Survey Modules becoming more useful).

There is also the question of how the missile would be affected by the presence of a garrison in orbit around the planet... (My thought would be to make the garrison auto-attack the missile IF a Fleet manager is built on the planet, since that's another thing I want to see become more useful)

Anyway, this was just a random idea that I'd love to see implemented.
warfare
26,680 views 27 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree. This kind of seems like the missle unit back in GalCiv 1. you know, the one that dishes out 9999 damage or something like that?

anyway, great idea, at least I think so.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It sounds cool, like the jump missiles in colony wars 2, I like those.

To get these massively cool and powerful missiles to work, there will have to be some penalty so the game doesn't turn into just shooting interplanetary missiles at each other. So for them to work, I'd say the best penalty is using up a very large number of squares on the planet you build them on.

First you'll need to build the missile luancher/silo, where you will luanch the missiles from, then a storage facility where you will keep all your missiles that are built, an advanced targeting station that will be used to control the missile, and finally, a missile factory, to build the missiles.

This is a good penalty for the super destructive missiles we're talking about. And you also have to pay for every missile you build.

another idea: you could plot the course your missile moves on so that it avoids trade routes and any friendly or nuetral starsystems.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sounds neat, i dono about being able to hit other planets though. It could be a great improvment for planetary defence, perhaps if you had several planets with this improvment built in the same sector they could boost each others defences in a missle defence grid sort of way. (just dislike the thought of a missle travelling across a galaxy and hitting its target)Jus my thoughts.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If you could send missiles at other planets, why not use those missiles to blow up enemy ships? It seems silly that planets can't have guns that ca shoot down an enemy ship. Anyone here seen Stargate?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, planet-based guns are also on my list of things I'd like to see.

And I wouldn't want the missiles to be truly devastating, just damaging enough that you generally don't want to get him by them (For example, a missile hit kills 10% of the population of the planet and destroys a random 10% of planetary improvements (minimum 1)). Just so that there is a way to attack planets without invading them.

Or you could have more powerful missiles that can be researched and that knock down planet quality, taking buildable tiles off the planet until eventually the planet is turned into an uninhabitable, blasted wasteland (PQ 0). But those missiles would have to be very expensive and/or easier to take down...
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If this ever became a option i would hope it is a toggle, (like mega events) and Iwould turn this off immediately.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like the idea of land based weapons. In a world with hyperdrive, giant beam weapons, et al, it's a little silly and in my opinion an oversimplification to not have land based weapons too. After all, a starbase can boost damage to ships in a (overall speaking) very large area, so clearly it is able to project it's power a long way. Therefore I think that planet based weaponry that makes it more difficult to invade a planet would be very nice.

It's be a large help over the current way of doing things. A planet based defense would have to be balanced somehow to make a world tougher to invade, but not impossible lategame.

And I'd buy into some planetary attack missiles. Any kind that did serious, irreversable damage like PQ loss would have to be subject to an incredibly huge relations hit on anyone who was at decent relations with the target planet though.

-- You used nuclear weaponry on our friends!
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There already are such improvements. Planetary defense improvements provide a soldiering bonus to a world that makes them tougher to invade. Okay, they could probably use a significant stats boost to make them worth considering, but they're there.

As for interplanetary missiles... it would be cool to see them in some form, though I would wholly expect that starbases would also be equipped to use them as well. Ideas that come to mind immediately:

*The interplanetary nukes that have already been mentioned, possible to intercept. They could even be implemented as buildable ships ala transports, except that expending the ship only damages the planet instead of landing troops on it. The modules would need to be expensive and large to keep things under control, though.

*Planetary/starbase artillery. Not necessarily capable of hitting planets, but some kind of weaponry that would allow whatever is equipped with it to attack opponents at a distance without exposing themselves to return fire. The amount of damage that could be done in a single attack would of course be finite, but it would allow you to soften them up from a distance.

Actually, these two aren't mutually exclusive, and would even counter each other somewhat.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It would be fun to see two different races colonize two planets in the same star system. They would be about one turn away and they would be beating the crap out of eachother!  
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sounds fun JubJub15. i want to watch too.  That might make it more worth while to not colonize around your enemy's space.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like the idea of land based weapons. In a world with hyperdrive, giant beam weapons, et al, it's a little silly and in my opinion an oversimplification to not have land based weapons too. After all, a starbase can boost damage to ships in a (overall speaking) very large area, so clearly it is able to project it's power a long way. Therefore I think that planet based weaponry that makes it more difficult to invade a planet would be very nice.
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Not very realistic though. Space is the "high ground." Anything on a planet is a target that can't evade. Read Niven and Pournelle's Footfall (if you haven't already) for a good high ground invasion scenario. When you control space, all you have to do is sit back and throw rocks. In an invasion, neither side would want to cede that high ground advantage. After the conflict is determined in space battle, invasion is just a messy job of eliminating or enslaving the surface population (insert evil race laugh here).

I'm not sure I like star system-crossing missiles either. At the point where they could reasonably defend themselves and not just be dumb targets, they might as well be piloted ships instead. It would be smarter to do what the aliens did in Footfall.... park your ship out in the asteroid belt and throw rocks. I mean, why move all that mass the long way between star systems, when the raw materials for kinetic weapons are already in-system? It might be interesting if asteroid belts in the game could be used that way... take one over, build a military base on it instead of a mine, and throw rocks for planetary bombardment. I think that might be more fun (and more realistic) than missiles that cross interstellar distances. But maybe I've just read too much Niven.

Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It would be smarter to do what the aliens did in Footfall.... park your ship out in the asteroid belt and throw rocks.
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That's a whole new ballpark, but I like the idea!  

Throw rocks at enemy planets sounds like asteroid mining could be used offensively. More reason to take as many as you can. Especially if the mines are close to your planets.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You'd need to put a basic hyperdrive on the rocks, but yeah, sounds awesome.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Right, nothing special needed. Just the ability to push a rock the same speed you need to move around a solar system with a spaceship anyway.

So... one basic engine per rock, or even better... a "pusher ship" that just moves it in the right direction, and goes back for another rock. Why waste an engine? There's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy at those speeds. It was enough to create the Chicxulub Crater and wipe out the dinosaurs.

The Footfall novel also has an interesting use of small-scale, targeted kinetic weapons to take out military vehicles like tanks. They were basically dumb iron rods with a final approach targeting mechanism, something like the iron rebar rods used in construction, boosted to interplanetary transit speed. You don't need exotic weapons if you can just push dumb matter fast enough, against static targets, and nobody is out in space with a mobile force stopping you. That's how the Chinese recently demonstrated their version of an anti-satellite weapon.

Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think an interesting concept in land based weapons would be for them to be improvements. You could have one type for each weapon type, and they would be used to simply attack any ships within a given range of a planet. They would have to have a fairly high attack value compared to ship based weapons, but only get one attack and the enemy does not get to return fire. The balance would have to be that ships can target these improvements from orbit, but similarly only getting one attack per ship. This would eliminate the annoyance of having to station a ship around every planet just to avoid being spammed by troop ships.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
a "pusher ship" that just moves it in the right direction, and goes back for another rock. Why waste an engine? There's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy at those speeds.
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Actually in space there is no friction, except a sort of gravity friction. But none the less, the pusher ship could just slowly pull away from the asteroid when it reaches its maximum speed. SInce there is no air to slow it down.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Not so: the rock either needs to be brought to the target with a hyperdrive equipped ship and released, or equipped with it's own engine and limited guidance to get it to the (very large) target. When the asteroid fields are on the outer edge of the solar system (or in a neighbouring solar system), accelerating them and letting good old relativity do it's thing simply takes too long

While using a transport ship of some kind is a valid option (I think that's what's done with the orbital bombardment invasion option) another option is to set up a local factory in the asteroid fields and directly turn the resources into the necessary components to create self propelled armageddon rocks. With properly developed facilities, you'd crank out new projectiles at an alarming pace.

Heck, being able to convert mining bases into local production facilities as such would be pretty awesome.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Take a ship with a cable, attach to big rock, head towards planet till close enough to release cable and sling shot it into the planets atmosphere. lol, why would you strap a hyperdrive engine to a rock? Also how would you imagine controlling said rock?
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why would you put a hyperdrive on?

Conventional engines are limited by the speed of light. As such, towing or adding conventional thrusters to said asteroid means that the asteroid does not hit the target for a very long time, likely in excess of a year, especially if you weren't prepared to provide an obscene amount of reaction mass/energy to get that rock moving.

Put a cheap hyperdrive on it with a few simple navigation systems to get it where it needs to be, and it reaches the target within a few weeks... without needing absurd amounts of reaction mass or the obscene speeds necessary in the "strap a rocket to a rock" model.

Towing a rock with a hyperdrive capable ship has it's own problems. You would generally need a ship large enough to carry them without increasing its mass by too much. Towing rocks with a transport is basically how the orbital bombardment invasion tech is carried out.

The alternative I'm proposing, here, is to construct a factory in an asteroid belt that harvests materials, turns those materials into the necessary components, straps them to a rock, and sends said rock (which now has the ability to travel a PARSEC OR MORE in a week) towards the nearest enemy planet. As it is a factory, it CONTINUES sending superluminal rocks at other planets until it is destroyed or deactivated.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Good idea starstriker1. Sending an asteroid at anyone's planet would really ruin their day.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A gravity well sling shot would work tied to an aiming computer to get the billiard shot right.Robots could be made to induce black holes the size of the rock thus getting the acceleration.
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Black holes? ROCK size black holes? :P

At that point you may as well just toss the thing into the sun and destroy the solar system that way. Using a black hole to launch ROCKS? Might be overkill. Maybe!
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That would explain why I constantly have to build new troop carriers after every invasion.