i have a game that i am working on where most of the combat occurs in space and with typical space navy units. i do have however a unit that is used to capture the surface of planets to gain control of the current tile.
the biggest problem i see with this is there are 6 units that face combat in space, and only 1 unit for the ground. i dont want to make too many types of units (for both complexity reasons and possible production reasons) and so i end up with a surface battle that might be too boring. to my mind it is like the difference between axis and allies and risk.
anyways, one idea i had tossed around in the past and am coming back to is this. having the fighter units (which are the smallest space unit) be able to act as air support for the ground units. in this case, the fighters would have a completely different set of stats depending on if they were in space or on the ground. in space they are basically equivalent to the marines (ground units), but on the ground they would be equivalent to say the cruisers which are 3 times more powerful (roughly). there would also be something that would stipulate that fighters that took part in a space battle could not be used in a ground battle that turn or something similar to prevent the players from double dipping so to speak.
would it be too confusing to have a unit have two different sets of stats for different environments?
btw, the map is setup like a ocean with planets being islands and not a continent, which limits the movement of the ground units (they need to be transported via a transport ship).
i will follow you down this thought. if the ground forces were simplified and the larger force always did win, did they take casualties? if player 1 has 10 ground units and player 2 attacks with 15, does player 2 take 10 casualties and have 5 remaining? or would you have some kind of dice mechanism to determine percentage of casualties? say something like player 1 rolls a d6. if the roll is a 1 or 2, they inflict casualties up to 50% of their own number (in this case 5 casualties), if the roll is a 3 or 4, they inflict 100% of their own number (10 casualties), and if the roll is a 5 or 6 they inflict 150% of their number (result is a draw with both forces being mutually annihilated). i like the units for ground forces ( i call them marines) because i may want to give them a second function such as boarding hostile ships during space battles.
i may be interested in something simpler for straight up ground battles so they dont take so long. one of the changes i see is that right now i imagine that a force of 5 units vs 5 units could take 4 or more dice rolls to get a victor, with each unit having to roll a 1 to score a hit. i could up that to say 3, 2, or 1 for a hit (50% chance) but that does not really fit the rest of combat scheme unless if they rolled a 3, they could hit 3 targets for 1 damage each (it only takes 1 damage to destroy a ground unit).
just to throw another wrench into it back to the original questions, if i did change the ground units to be able to deal 3 damage, then they would have a much better chance of taking out any fighters that were acting as air support for the ground troops.