Ground unit management minor changes / additions

[DFNewb (OP)]

I was doing ground unit testing for bugs and was inspired to make this post. I think if these are implemented it would make ground combat less of a physical pain than it currently is.

Ground force training:

Aside from being able to train new formations, there will be two new functions added.

1. Add units (name work in progress): which will take a ground combat formation and add units based on a template to it. The formation will still be able to fight but will not be able to be transported. As anyone who has done combat testing has figured out by now, you constantly need to be adding supplies to your formations.
ex formation:
100x Light infantry.

Add formation 1st light infantry with formation template supplies

formation template supplies:
2x Infantry logistics 100

Would result in
100x Light infantry.
2x Infantry logistics 100


2. Replenish formation: Formations when built will "remember" their original formation and the units in it will be listed as 100/100 or 48/100 of the original formations units. Any elements added by facilities or manually by drag moving will just be 100 or 48. A ground force facility will be able to Replenish formation these back to full as a task. Same as above with the formation still being able to fight but can't be transported.


Final additions to make this all work would be:

1. A button in the ground forces management screen that would be something like "Make formation into template" which would take a formation and make it into a template.
2. A way to change the "remembered" formation type into a new formation type (either a button or maybe a drop down box per formation in the right side of the screen) which would update the x/y values, for example:

Making the above Infantry example into the supplies example:

Would go from:
1st Infantry (infantry)
100/100x Light infantry

into:

1st Infantry (supplies)
100x Light infantry
0/2x Infantry logistics 100

then you could replenish into 2/2.



I think these changes would not affect the current system in any way and would greatly enhance the current system for players. I also think they would not be too difficult to implement.
 Please give any feedback below!

[Droll]

2. Replenish formation: Formations when built will "remember" their original formation and the units in it will be listed as 100/100 or 48/100 of the original formations units. Any elements added by facilities or manually by drag moving will just be 100 or 48. A ground force facility will be able to Replenish formation these back to full as a task. Same as above with the formation still being

I would recommend that its not a "remember" thing and more a "build to template" thing. Imagine that somewhere in the UI is a dropdown selection with your designed formations, you select the formation you want to replenish and then select the target formation to build to. This will do two things:

1 - Create a "one-off" template that has all the missing units that need to be added and add it to the GU build queue, the new units either immediately join their intended formation or are dropped into their own formation which can be merged. IMO in the case of the latter there should be some sort of "merge" button that allows the player to instantly merge all units between two formations.
2 - There may be units that are not in the target template that are in the template that is being "retrofitted", these units are separated into their own "surplus" formation and appear on the OOB as an independent formation which can be re-organized somewhere else. If the target has no common units this might result in the retrofitted formation being temporarily empty.

[Droll]

I think OP mentions this at the start of the post but the ability to create "OOB hierarcy templates" would be nice. Say I have 3 templates:

1-Infantry Regiment HQ
2-Infantry Battalion HQ
3-Infantry company

Say I intend to create the following OOB:
Infanty Regiment HQ
   Infantry Battalion HQ
      Infantry Company
      Infantry Company
      Infantry Company
   Infantry Battalion HQ
      Infantry Company
      Infantry Company
      Infantry Company

Currently I would order the training of the required formations and manually create the OOB every single time I want to train this infantry regiment.
With the ability to design an "OOB template", I would be able to define an "Infantry Regiment", much like the OOB menu, the designer would allow me to select the formations that I have designed (as opposed to built) and much like the normal OOB allow me to define the hierarchy (maybe allow artillery support to be defined as well?) of the OOB template. Once designed, in the GU build menu I would be able to order the construction of this "Infantry Regiment". This would create 9 build tasks; the regiment hq, 2 battalion hqs and 6 infantry companies.

The one problem left is how to handle automatically organizing the OOB this template. Here are the issues we have:
a - not every formation will finish training at the same time: What happens if the companies are trained first?
b - if the regiment hq is trained first, and for some reason it is moved away from the training population, what happens to the rest?

For a:
For the OOB template designer to accept a template, its hierarchy must have a clearly defined "root formation". In the example I showed this would be the regiment hq formation. This means that all other formations will have something to attach under - the battalions will "remember" their intended parent regiment hq and the companies will remember their parent battalion hqs.

To facilitate this tracking, any formation unit that is built using a OOB template (as opposed to directly using its formation template) will have an "intended parent" formation. If a formation is on the same population as its "intended parent", it automatically assigns itself under (assuming that it is a valid assignment) said parent and clears its tracker. The best way of doing this is to have the "intended parent" be a part of the UI that the player can influence. This means that if I changed my mind I can clear the intended parent. Likewise if I am training a division HQ and I want my already trained brigades to immediately attach once the division is done, I can set that field to the division in the construction menu (this is kind of an extension of the feature at this point).

This should make it feasible for me to queue up the training of lets say 100 fully fledged divisions with completely custom hierarchies and only make me have to do the support relationships manually. I do believe that it would be easy to extend this feature to also have the OOB template remember artillery support relationships as well. Just add an "will be supporting/intended support" field much in the same vain as "intended parent". The main problem is that we are bloating the UI with all these fields that the player can interact with but im not a professional GUI designer.

Whats important about this is that it maintains Steve's vision of not wanting formations to be "set" to a template. Changing an OOB template will not affect any formations that are in training. This is also in no way mutually exclusive with or intended to replace the current formation template designer, it will work alongside it. I can still train individual formations if I choose to.

For b:
This is inter-related with a, and as such is solved through the way that I outline the tracking would work. If the parent is not present on that population then the formation in question will be an independent formation with its "intended parent" set to whatever formation it is supposed to be. So if their intended parent returns to the same body it will then assign, assuming the player has not changed that field.

[alex_brunius]

in the GU build menu I would be able to order the construction of this "Infantry Regiment". This would create 9 build tasks; the regiment hq, 2 battalion hqs and 6 infantry companies.

Most of the complexity you try to find solutions to later in your post seems to come from the suggestion to create several build tasks. Seems in my eyes it would be alot easier to just summarize all the costs from all parts and run it as a single training task that's more expensive instead. Once the task is done the entire formation can be created at once. It might take a few years to train an entire division that way but seems like a much more failsafe solution and in the end you want to use this to build alot of divisions / regiments or what not anyways so it will not make that much difference if you run them in parallel or in a series.

[Droll]

in the GU build menu I would be able to order the construction of this "Infantry Regiment". This would create 9 build tasks; the regiment hq, 2 battalion hqs and 6 infantry companies.

Most of the complexity you try to find solutions to later in your post seems to come from the suggestion to create several build tasks. Seems in my eyes it would be alot easier to just summarize all the costs from all parts and run it as a single training task that's more expensive instead. Once the task is done the entire formation can be created at once. It might take a few years to train an entire division that way but seems like a much more failsafe solution and in the end you want to use this to build alot of divisions / regiments or what not anyways so it will not make that much difference if you run them in parallel or in a series.

That is almost certainly an alternate solution to some of those problems. However this complicates the actual way build tasks in general are handled. The system right now is built to only really handle individual formations in the training menu, now you have to create a build task that is different because it has to internally store an OOB.

In my way you in effect are able to more or less use the existing system, just with more UI elements. It also provides more flexibility because the "intended parent" UI element could also be potentially used on old formations that have already been trained but are expecting an HQ to train.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In addition to all this I want the ability to "upgrade" current formations to new formations with new weapons and equipment's.

They should loose some morale depending on how different the old and new formation is. Even if they are identical but with just newer a better equipment they should still loose some moral by doing this.

Right now the only way is to delete a formation and you don't get ANY resources back which I think is a bit strange. STO weapons could at least add the weapon itself to the component pile on that world so you can either reuse it or scrap it later on.

[DFNewb (OP)]

In addition to all this I want the ability to "upgrade" current formations to new formations with new weapons and equipment's.

They should loose some morale depending on how different the old and new formation is. Even if they are identical but with just newer a better equipment they should still loose some moral by doing this.

Right now the only way is to delete a formation and you don't get ANY resources back which I think is a bit strange. STO weapons could at least add the weapon itself to the component pile on that world so you can either reuse it or scrap it later on.

I thought of this as well but it might require new code to implement. I wanted to suggest something that would require almost no new code and only copy pasted code from other parts of the game.

[liveware]

From my very limited ground combat experiences, my two biggest gripes are:

1. There is no way to retire or scrap ground units. Death or deletion are the only options.

2. It would be fantastic if the ship construction UI was adapted to the ground unit training system. Specifically it is very convenient that each newly constructed ship is assigned a fleet when it is constructed. This same model would be very useful if adapted to the GU training system as it would allow for newly constructed ground units to be gracefully added to existing hierarchies.

[CowboyRonin]

In addition to all this I want the ability to "upgrade" current formations to new formations with new weapons and equipment's.

They should loose some morale depending on how different the old and new formation is.  Even if they are identical but with just newer a better equipment they should still loose some moral by doing this.

Right now the only way is to delete a formation and you don't get ANY resources back which I think is a bit strange.  STO weapons could at least add the weapon itself to the component pile on that world so you can either reuse it or scrap it later on.

Actually, it should be pretty close - the ship refit logic already does this (calculates crew difference between ships and adjusts crew grade).   I have thought myself that I would really like to see the ship refit logic applied to ground units.

I thought of this as well but it might require new code to implement.  I wanted to suggest something that would require almost no new code and only copy pasted code from other parts of the game.

[Droll]

2. It would be fantastic if the ship construction UI was adapted to the ground unit training system. Specifically it is very convenient that each newly constructed ship is assigned a fleet when it is constructed. This same model would be very useful if adapted to the GU training system as it would allow for newly constructed ground units to be gracefully added to existing hierarchies.

This is excellent and greatly simplifies my whole "OOB template" idea even if it isn't as powerful. The one extension I would add to this would be to also be able to select other ground formations already being built. The drawback of this extension is that you'd need checks to make sure that training cancellation etc. doesn't mess things up.

[Malorn]

So...I just had a very heavy ground-unit game...we REALLY need a 'rebuild formation' option. I kept having to disband units that had been reduced to headquarters, artillery, and supply units.

It would really be wonderful to be able to just click a button and have the formation built back up to spec.

[Droll]

So...I just had a very heavy ground-unit game...we REALLY need a 'rebuild formation' option. I kept having to disband units that had been reduced to headquarters, artillery, and supply units.

It would really be wonderful to be able to just click a button and have the formation built back up to spec.

As far as I understand something like this is in the works but might not be on the top of the priority list.