Welcome back, today I will be discussing one of the most intricate mechanics designed for Solar Nations 2, being the unit designer and its associated systems.
Usually, in these kinds of games there is distinct systems for different domains, and while this works if you only have to worry about land, sea and maybe air, we have 5 domains to worry about: Land, Sea, Air, Space, and Strategic. Therefore, significant effort was spent on synchronizing the mechanics for each domain so there is less to learn and more to master in working with and between the domains to create powerful armies and destroy your opponents.
Unit Components
Every unit in Solar Nations 2 is simply a set of components tied to a domain. Each component provides stats and increases the cost of the unit, allowing for ultimate customizability of your military. Units can be augmented using single components that can completely change the way they operate on the field- and this can be done dynamically allowing you to pivot your doctrine and focus at will, encouraging flexibility and adaptability in your playstyle.
Unit Designer showing the design of an infantry unit. The AI always uses these generic units, and they upgrade themselves automatically when new technology is researched.
Size and Combat Width
Size is the amount of Combat Width a unit takes up. You want to fill out the whole combat width of any battle you take part in, but any extra units in the battle do not contribute to damage, so keeping size small and packing units full of offensive abilities will ensure your damage is maximized in battle. However, units low in Health or high in certain vulnerabilities can be easily destroyed, making for costly reinforcement.
Damage Types and Vulnerabilities
The most important of the stats are the damage types and Vulnerabilities . Tanks, for example, are vulnerable to land based piercing attacks, less so to land based missile and small arms fire, and are not vulnerable to water, air, and space attacks. That does not mean that air units cannot harm tanks, only that tanks cannot be shot down by weapons meant for airplanes or spaceships. This results in an interesting relationship between units, as you will need to take steps to counter enemy units of specific kinds while also ensuring your units put enough pressure on the enemy to force them into the defensive position.
APCs make units faster and lower their vulnerability to soft attack, for a price.
Entrenchment and Breakthrough
Entrenchment is the key to defender advantage, as it provides a baseline level of advantage (each unit of advantage corresponds to 1% damage multiplier) at the beginning of a battle, whereas each breakthrough nullifies one point of entrenchment. Advantage is one of the only ways to increase your damage in such a way that does not also leave you open to enemy attack, so maximizing it is key to winning battles. In addition, entrenchment becomes more powerful as it scales, because the attacker will chip away at your defenses over the course of a battle at a linear rate, eventually turning the tides in their favor, potentially forcing a retreat on your part.
Carriers
Units can hold other units inside them. This allows those units to travel and do battle in places they otherwise would not be able to. However, you must obtain hangar space in order to store units inside the other unit.
Here is a carrier design, it will contain ~300 planes when built. If the carrier is destroyed, the planes will go with it.