Land Unit Model

[Kuciwalker]

I think it would be good to diverge from the traditional TBS unit model and instead have "armies" consist of numbers of types of units. A "unit" would be a single object or person; for example, a single soldier would be one unit, while a tank would be another. An army could be 1000 soldier equipped with assault rifles, 100 small transport helicopters, etc. Units would also require supplies, so you would have to attach supply units (a transport vehicle of some kind with fuel and/or ammunition loaded into it) to their armies, and resupply them every so often. This process could be automated to reduce MM, but there would actually be transports moving around, so that a player could cut off an enemies supply route.

[Kuciwalker]

Note: when I say "land", in this post and above, I mean "surface" (includes air units).

Land and water combat would be simulated, not under human command. Space combat, however, would be different.

As we are using Newtonian physics to govern space movement and combat (we are, right?), I don't think spacefighters would be feasible. Therefore, it is possible to create a space combat system where the player actually gets to command the ships and tell them what to do. This would be a great feature of the game.

[Blake]

Actually for surface combat that is the very system we intend to use And there would be no limit on the size of an army, and a larger army would have a larger Zone of Control and be able to attack things inside it's ZoC.

There would be very little control involved, just give the army an objective/waypoint in enemy territory and they'll fight their way to the objective, destroying or conquering everything in their path, the best way to stop such a rampage is to intercept the invading army with an equally powerfull army (or win the orbital war).
There would probably be a few priorities you can give the army, like "cautious" (retreat if overwhelmed), "stealth" (avoid fighting and head straight to the objective).

Regarding supply, well it's one of the reasons I'm so fond of splitting the game into space and planet surface, you can easily have things like making it so units on another planet must be supplied, meaning either the presence of supply ships in orbit, or some sort of supply route. To cut off supply simply gain control of the orbit, meaning the enemies ground forces are doomed to die with no supply, unless the orbit can quickly be regained.

I dont think it would be useful to have supply matter on friendly worlds, altough on a world occupied by two players if an army is isolated in enemy territory prehaps then they should start to die the no supply death.

Space Combat:
It is difficult to be able to control a battle in realtime when the game is turn based, because it either forces all players to be connected, or multiple different combat modes for different game types. I think something like MOO3's task forces is worth looking into, because it would give the player a fair amount of control.

[Kuciwalker]

It wouldn't be real-time. It's just that this way angle of attack and speed have serious affects on combat.

I think in space combat it should go into a "combat" mode. You should just be able to tell a ship "fire these weapons at this ship" and it will do it. A missile or a shell will then be created and launched in a certain direction at a certain velocity. Missiles might take several turns to reach their targets, and might have to maneuver. Lasers will be modeles like special shells, except that they move REALLY FAST and the enemy can't see them. Also, weapons will have different ranges, and stuff might hit friendly ships.

I think that resources and "tech goods" (see the tech goods thread) should be stored on the city/army level, so an army might have a certain amount of the "small-arms munitions", "surface-to-air missiles", etc. The same should go for cities, though they can turn resources into tech good with the necessary facilities. This lets you lay seige to a city and eventually just get it because the defenders run out of ammunition.

[targon]

skywalker, last several millenia armies are based on thing called "line of command". That means you as High Command can't direct fire of every ship weapons. It even is't up to ship Commanders, it's up to their respective Weapon Officers. Among other things, this is a huge decrease in both MM and unfair non-game-related advantages like better 3D card, bigger monitor or thicker net pipes.

[Blake]

The unfair advantages is a very good point, another thing I consider an unfair advantage is playing time, just being able to micro for 2 hours per turn shouldn't give a decisive advantage, thus the game should be made to be played at a "commander" level rather than at every level of civilian&military command including supervising the cook to ensure he is feeding the soldiers a balanced diet
In short player time should be spent making strategic decisions rather than doing housekeeping like supplying ammo to a dozen different armies.

I think that resources and "tech goods" (see the tech goods thread) should be stored on the city/army level

And just to reply to this here, storing things on the city level would result in MM hell, and is also hardly realistic because it's not that hard to transport stuff around, even smuggling it if nessecary. Prehaps a city could be blockaded (thus isolating it from the rest of the planet) but even then I dont think they would run out of ammo in any hurry, because cities would presumably have high tech manafacturing facilities that can mass produce ammo (or pratically anything else), and I'm almost certain the defenders would run out of bodies before cached ammo anyway.

Missiles might take several turns to reach their targets, and might have to maneuver.

The problem with a missile taking several turns to reach it's target, is that turns are measured in units comparable to a earth year. Battles are concluded much faster than that (also having a single skirmish take multiple turns while the missiles fly back and forth would make for rather tedius wars)
And turns cannot be made shorter, because that would ruin the builder aspect of the game, and above all StP will be a game for the builders

[targon]

I think battles must be instant in terms of game time. Engine must show how exactly units behaved, preferable with lots of eye candy, but in most like Stars! "Battle VCR".
Concidering MM-junkies, that guys may spoil every game. I know another recipe of keeping they low profile: limited amount of orders they may issue (per player or per planet/fleet etc). This limit may be fairly high for normal players but hindering for MM. This limit also may depend on infrastructure, planet development and communications, distance from flagship/capital etc. On other hand, this situation may be augumented via good AI advisors (nothing like dumb C:FB admirals). So MM becomes history