might it be better to use regions and "marches" instead of individual planets for the macro scale?
Once you have an invasion in to a "march" you could click on to the region and then go in to planetary assault mode..
Seems like it could handle things better if you didn't have 50 million objects on screen at the same time.
Also if you do something like battletech then you can have an inner sphere of a couple of hundred worlds instead of millions.
It's a question of scale. Who would care about an individual world battle in a war for the universe?
It would be like simulating the flight of a single bullet in a WWII sim which covered the whole european conflict.
The idea's to have sort of an Inner Sphere sandbox environment where hundreds or even thousands of players could be running their own plans, focusing on what's going on in their local area.
Sure, those taking the roles of the House Lords are focused on the interchange of border worlds. However, those running mercenary regiments would be fairly bored just to go to Planet X and have the fate of their unit determined by one pass of the random number generator. Likewise, unless we get a fairly fine level of detail, battling for entire sectors at a time leaves the Homeworld Clans with jack squat to keep them entertained, since that's way too huge a scale for your average Trial of Possession. (We're setting the campaign in 3025, so all the Clans are still up in the Kerensky Cluster).
The old Succession Wars game used macro-scale, and that was fine. However, I'm trying to set up an environment where players can micromanage their unit compositions and maneuver them around any planet they like in the Inner Sphere or Clan space.
There shouldn't be 50 million items on the screen at once - that's just the total number of lines I expect to be in the terrain hex database, with 300 hexes per planet of significant size (7 hexes for medium moons and asteroids, and 1 hex for small moons, since orbital bodies with diameters of 1-100 kilometers aren't likely to play host to battles that involve a lot of strategic maneuver). The interface uses drill-down displays to keep the amount of info under control.
Each faction's starmap only contains the worlds they know about (so the Jarnfolk's map, for example, won't be cluttered with irrelevant Capellan, Free Worlds and FedSuns systems), but can be expanded by exploration. Clicking on a system icon brings up info about the system (startype, planets, asteroid belts); clicking on a planet brings up info about the planet and its satellites (if any). Clicking on a rocky world or moon brings up a 300-hex planetary invasion map. Clicking on an individual hex brings up info about that hex (strategic facilities therein, mineral output, agricultural output, population, industrial output, infrastructure).
The scale would be too detailed if we just had slots for House Lords, but players can be corporate presidents (CEO of Defiance Industries, for example), merchant traders, mercenaries, House military commanders at various levels (from Supreme Marshal of the AFFS to CO of a Planetary Guard Unit), pirates, nobles (like Duke Ricol, who raised his own army and pursued his own agenda), or even the ruler of one of the 'Mad Max' city states on Antallos. While the tools exist to micromanage your troops (fun for small units), there are also tools for issuing mass orders so you don't have to (which is a relief for Hanse Davion's player).
The 'one roll and the whole march changes hands' works fine in the Succession Wars board game, but didn't allow us to simulate a lot of the fun stuff from BattleTech history. For example, the Capellan strategic philosophy is for Home Guard and Militia units to do their best to hold out against invasion until elite Warrior House troops can be dispatched as reinforcements. If the battle's over before they get there, that doesn't work. Many of the sourcebooks refer to battles for planets stretching out for years as both sides maneuver and reinforce. That's the kind of engagement I want to enable.
