(02-04-2022, 05:22 PM)AnrDaemon Wrote: If you recall the old way of capturing cities, it was a perfect balance of time and action.
The only difference now is that buildings are damage'able. The easy solution I can see is, you can not "destroy" building, but only "damage" it.
"Damaged" building lose up to 50% of its capacity (production lines become locked and inoperable, houses reduce in capacity, storage is reduced, etc.). The building appears "ruined" and never fully removed from the scene, thus will still block gunfire.
Now about gunfire. The way to subvert capture mechanics in the past was to gun down every living creature on sight. It was so easy because of transparency of the buildings, and there were a number of attempts at preventing this mechanic, like "population hides underground" and so on. But now, that "ruins" are blocking line of sight, this all is no longer necessary. Population could still pop around every now and then, but you'll have to, either, hold a lot of "gun points" through the city to control the territory, or leave them be and wait for loyalty to switch, or an original owner to fight back.
I am definitely not against the idea of removing total building destruction. And something similar to the old loyalty mechanic could work if city capture was changed to be somewhat like it used to be. It is however somewhat major changes, and somewhat even going back to an old system, so I have almost given up on such ideas.
You already know that I think the new building system is way overcomplicated and hard to learn or use. So I would love to see major changes in that area of the game to make it more streamlined and user-friendly.
The way we are now getting the noncombatant system makes the old city conquest mechanics not seem totally ideal though. If the general idea to to allow for a defender to actually be online or at least get a chance to counter-attack before damage is done, then a siege system seem the easiest option to replace noncombatant system
I would love to see "Troop Guard Posts" and such buildings replaced with encounters that spawn military units to engage enemies, rather than just have NPC troops standing around for no reason. I would love to see Military Motor Pools spawn mechanized infantry squads that move to the location of detected enemies, and similar things. Have ground defense be more active instead of just making it sit and wait to be wiped out.