Ground combat ideas

[Johnny Hazard]

Hello Devs and fellow Players
After more than 100 hours playing this VERY PROMISING game (Hot damn! It has everything one expects in a space game adventure!)
I feel the need to give some ideas about how ground combat could work better. I'll leave assorted pointers, hoping that, when joining them together, ground combat will feel unique and fun for many many players.
So... here we go:

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1- Jetpacks. They shouldn't work like they do in space. It's a tiny jetpack on a person's back. And due to it, some crazy measures like "turrets hitting players if they get high ground" ensued. Come on, getting the high-ground is a must for proper snipers, and combat forces.
So, what to do with jetpacks? Make them hover and decrease fall speed when in atmospheres. Players and NPCs can use them to hover fast across distances, but adding an energy cost to them will reduce the abuse. If characters could even shoot while using it, it would be even more valuable. As long as using it depleted that character's energy, always.
--- crossing a distance fast. Blitz assaults.
--- denying fall damage, and fast landing for strike forces deployed by ships.
--- fast jump into higher ground. (Enemies should be able to do it too)- that would mean jumping button assigned to jetpack too- changing the simple jump into a jetpack assisted one. This one should cost even more on energy.
With this change, Turrets would leave characters alone, and focus only and always on targeting unauthorized or enemy ships close enough.
Players would have to land ships further away to avoid these defensive guns.

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2- Damage. This one is a BIG question to all games that have fps in it. But to make it good, we only have to look at the best examples. And what are those? It may vary, but I myself like the Call of Duty style. It means humanoids on foot are vulnerable, no matter their level, and need one of three things:
--- cover. Yes, cover. Focus ground combat on properly using cover, suppression fire, assisted fire, and mobility under cover. Every character on foot, SHOULD look for cover or get serious damage. This would mean some mechanic like using crouch button to make the character identify the closest cover to the direction he is facing and use it, being hide behind a wall/pillar/structure, crouch under crates/walls/defensive structures, or even, when in open ground, pressing crouch twice to fall prone and crawl. Pressing jump while in cover, crouch or prone, would make the character do a fast slide, and the next press of jump would make him/her roll. These moves should cost some stamina.
Progression would mean moving under cover, directing our team-mates to good firing positions, and forcing the enemy out of cover.
--- mechs. Yup, armored sh1t. These mechs could be useable, staying idle and with open canopy until someone enters them. They would have energy shield, armor, and hull to break. They would have heavy firepower, to make them a real issue in ground combat.
These mechs would be sparse, normally only used by raider bosses, elite mercs, or military forces from a faction.
Mechs would move slow, but pack a serious punch. And wouldn't need cover. BUT, they could give cover to fellow soldiers.
And when I say mechs, that could include armored vehicles, even tanks.
--- Heavy guns. Mounted. Had to be dismounted and replaced to be usable again. This means heavy machine-guns, anti-mech artillery, and explosive launchers. Things that forced players in that situation to stop camping and try a more risky assault, or good use of snipers.

For this to work properly, characters' should use combat armor with:
energy shield - this one regenerates by itself. Can't be too high, though, it's just combat armor, not a mech with huge generator at its back.
armor - damage reducing. Critical chance reducing. Can be repaired with nano-repair-bots consumables, or in repair-stations, where available (usually stations and outposts)
health - doesn't recharge. Needs medkit consumable to heal, or a medic soldier assist.
energy - used as it currently is. Skills and jetpack use.
stamina - for sprinting, dodging and rolling around.

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3- Instances. A village is a village, but a fort is not a village. Each type of structure should have it's quirks, some unique.
- A refugee village - no walls, no defensive structures, civilians and some mixed armed militia. They could have a barracks, where the main armed forces are stationed. Attacking it would make armed forces choose cover inside the perimeter, high ground at the houses' balconies, and/or keep defensive positions in the barracks. Some villages with a radio tower, could summon reinforcements that would come into a random position, dropping with jetpacks to control the fall.
- A refugee village taken by pirates, raiders, bandits, or merc force. They would build barricades around the village, maybe even some wodden/make-shift watch towers for snipers and heavy machine guns. They would have a boss, maybe even an elite squad. Again, they could call reinforcements if they had a radio-tower. Blowing the radio tower up would stop reinforcements.
- A colony. They have better modular houses, a wall, and watch towers by default. They would have a militia force, stationed at the center, in a military complex, with high positions and heavy guns mounted there. Watch towers would have turrets for anti-air support, and could position snipers/heavy guns.
If required to not overload the computers, enemies can spawn from inside, through bunker doors. These spawn points can be destroyed, though.
Colonies always have a radio tower.
Colonies controlled by raiders or pirates have their walls damaged, usually patched with crude plates. They may have damaged houses and towers inoperable, or crudely repaired. Despite that, the mechanics are the same. Military compound at the center, with bunker spawn points, and high ground positions for defense.
These, colonies sometimes have their radio tower destroyed.
- Outposts. These are always highly protected structures. Wall, towers, structure at the center, and landing ports outside the perimeter.
Can have different bunker spawn points, but usually have an entrance at the center for underground facilities. These entrances can give access to random instances, but in the case of a mission, that's where the target will be.

IMPORTANT NOTE: don't make enemies spawn anywhere. Not game immersive. Make them come out of spawn points, like bunker entrances. And allow players to destroy these entrances as game strategy. Make them durable, though.

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4-Bosses and enemies. Making them bullet sponges is BAD. There's no fun in that. Make it strategic, by use of cover, combat tactics, like explosives, grenades, mines, suppressive fire with mounted machine-guns, mortars, etc...
If there's the need of making more durable bosses, then go for bosses that use mechs:
- exoskeleton - upgrades enemy to 2x shield, 2x armor, 2x energy.
- Light mechs - they hover with jets, they provide 3-4x shield, 3-4x armor, 2x energy. Can use heavy guns.
- Medium mechs - slow moving, but even higher shields and armor. No headshots critical. The enemy is fully encased in plate here. After the mech is destroyed, the boss can get out and still fight.
- Heavy mechs - big, dread, terrifying machines of mayhem and destruction. Heavy machine guns, missiles, cannons, lasers, etc... These can really be bullet sponges. Because, that's immersive. When these mechs are destroyed, they explode, with large area of effect.

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5- weaponry. Don't make all weapons available at level 1. Some weapons should only appear at level 10, or level 20, and so on. Again, level scaling, like with enemies is an issue here.
At early levels, weapons and damage seems balanced, but that goes all the way out of logic in higher levels. Space combat seems to adjust this, because players can push more damage through modules.
The correct way to think about this is ponder... how strong should a level 100 soldier be, compared to a level 1? 10 times? 1000 times?
Oriental gamers and probably used to god-like differences, but I don't think that is a good thing in a game, to have such an overwhelming power. It ruins the use of strategy and cover, and returns all ground combat to blitzkrieg-in-the-face kamikaze strikes that last eons, because everyone has too much armor and hitpoints.
Now, having a level 10 boss appear with an exoskeleton, and a level 80 boss appear in a huge siege mech... that's the space combat, right there!
I would advise, because of this, to consider a level 100 humanoid around 10x better than a level 1. And so, to adjust stats, it would mean picking the stats of a lvl1 soldier, and multiplying them with a factor of level*0.1. This way, a lvl 25 enemy would have stats*2.5, a lvl 60 would have stats*6, and so on. The rest, would depend on its gear, weapons, mechs used, elite squads following him, etc...
Bosses could be a little better than their soldiers, simply by adding 2-5 more levels, and be assigned a mech, or several bodyguards, combat robots, etc...

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Hope these ideas help taking the game out of the "promising" state, and into a remarkable space game that everyone wants to play.

Cheers!