Author Topic: Replacing PDCs  (Read 82070 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #510 on: December 16, 2017, 10:38:05 AM »
One request I have for ground forces is that we be able to transport ground troops and their equipment on colony ships and cargo ships.

More specifically, be able to split a ground formation into it's personnel and equipment separately, load them onto colony ships and cargo ships respectively, then unload and combine them at their destination.

This would allow much larger formations to be transported between friendly staging areas, but not be deploy-able directly into combat. Like using a container ship to transport tanks and equipment, and sending the troops on a cruise ship.

The way the ground units are setup, there is no division between equipment and personnel. I avoided that deliberately because of the complexities involved.
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #511 on: December 16, 2017, 12:40:41 PM »
I've finalised the HQ components. There are 9, with command ratings (in tons) of 1250, 2500, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 250k, 1m, 4m.

All but the last three are available from the start. The last three are 10k, 20k and 40k RP. There should be sufficient options for a variety of different formation sizes and some army-level HQs.
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #512 on: December 16, 2017, 03:55:20 PM »
Someone asked about conventional ground forces so I thought some comparisons may be interesting.

The first two vehicles here are a Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank and a Warrior AFV, both in service with the British Army. The Challenger has a base type of Vehicle, while the Warrior is a new base type, Light Vehicle, which is 12 tons and has a single component slot. The base armour and weapon modifiers are 3 (compared to 10 for all the other screenshots so far). 3 is the new rating for conventional armour (2 in VB6 Aurora) and 3 is also the minimum weapon modifier for ground unit classes.

The third screenshot is the same Challenger tank, but with base armour and weapon modifiers of 5, which is effectively Trans-Newtonian tech level 1. The conventional Challenger would have a 36% chance of penetrating the armour of this upgraded vehicle and a 60% chance of a kill if it did so (22% overall chance to kill). With superior numbers, the conventional forces would be able to put up a fight.

The final screenshot is a TL 4 heavy vehicle, which would be a fairly common type of tank at that level. TL4 is ceramic composite armour and 20cm lasers, with armour/weapon modifiers of 10. It isn't just a higher level of base technology (giving higher modifiers) that the conventional vehicles will have to face, but larger opponents with improved armour and weapons. The conventional Challenger has a 4% chance of penetrating the armour and a 30% chance of a kill if the armour is penetrated (1.2% overall chance to kill). This is more like war of the worlds :)

Conventional forces will be able to research larger vehicles and weapons (the modern US army building a 500 ton tank with a massive gun), but they will still be handicapped by their lower overall technology. Overall though, this should make TN vs conventional battles a lot more interesting, especially if the conventional side has a large numerical advantage.

BTW, the conventional vehicles work out pretty well in terms of matching real life. The real Challenger is 62 tons, while the Warrior is 25 tons. I tried to simulate the main gun and machine for the Challenger and the 30mm autocannon on the Warrior. In fact, as a result of this I will probably add an additional type of weapon, somewhere between anti-personnel and anti-tank to simulate the fast firing weapons of the Warrior or Bradley.







 
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Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #513 on: December 16, 2017, 05:23:40 PM »
The gameplay reason is to avoid having very large hierarchies filled with formations with no commanders and relatively junior officers at the top. By removing bonuses from formations without specified commanders, players have to create realistic command hierarchies, comprising between size and availability of commanders. It also avoids a potential exploit of creating a lot of very small formations to generate benefits from multi-level hierarchies, because you would need too many commanders to accomplish that (although you can still do it on a smaller scale for specialist units). On the other hand, creating a few very large formations making transport more difficult, reduces flexibility and does not allow for unused commanders to gain experience. In-game, that does translate to a situation where the assumption is that 'non-named' commanders are not skilled enough to benefit from their superiors.

Given the flexibility in command size we'll be seeing, will there be a way for players to adjust the rank ratios?

I've finalised the HQ components. There are 9, with command ratings (in tons) of 1250, 2500, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 250k, 1m, 4m.

All but the last three are available from the start. The last three are 10k, 20k and 40k RP. There should be sufficient options for a variety of different formation sizes and some army-level HQs.

Translating to infantry numbers, this means 250 troops, 500 troops, 1000 troops, 2000 troops, 4000 troops, 10 000 troops, 50 000 troops, 200 000 troops and 800 000 troops.

It also means that ground forces will have 9 or 10 (ish) promotion levels to play with. Expect players to optimize, heavily, towards the maximum weight limits and occasionally skip one level. 1250 ton Planetary Defense formations will probably have only a handful of units in them (STO and CIWS units are huge), or will simply use a larger HQ for convenience rather than to stack as many bonuses as possible.

BTW, the conventional vehicles work out pretty well in terms of matching real life. The real Challenger is 62 tons, while the Warrior is 25 tons. I tried to simulate the main gun and machine for the Challenger and the 30mm autocannon on the Warrior. In fact, as a result of this I will probably add an additional type of weapon, somewhere between anti-personnel and anti-tank to simulate the fast firing weapons of the Warrior or Bradley.

It's a Light Anti Vehicle Weapon. No seriously, that's its job. However, because it's fairly fast firing it's also great as an infantry support weapon meant to destroy lightly fortified positions or suppress enemy infantry formations.

Someone asked about conventional ground forces so I thought some comparisons may be interesting.

I'm not sure your math works out. Chance to pierce the armour is ((Armour Value)/Armour Piercing value)^2, right? because if I run those numbers, (20/12)^2 is distinctly not 0.36 , but 2.7777... Which is a marked difference in armour penetration between the two chances of penetration. And it'd be odd if the higher tech tank performed more poorly than the lower tech one.

« Last Edit: December 16, 2017, 05:55:35 PM by Hazard »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #514 on: December 16, 2017, 07:09:49 PM »
I'm not sure your math works out. Chance to pierce the armour is ((Armour Value)/Armour Piercing value)^2, right? because if I run those numbers, (20/12)^2 is distinctly not 0.36 , but 2.7777... Which is a marked difference in armour penetration between the two chances of penetration. And it'd be odd if the higher tech tank performed more poorly than the lower tech one.

Penetration Chance is (AP / Armour)^2
 

Offline snapto

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #515 on: December 16, 2017, 08:39:13 PM »
Great stuff Steve!  Had a few questions regarding HQ/commander bonuses:

Will units at the bottom of a command hierarchy receive the full bonuses of each HQ commander in that hierarchy or will they receive fractions of each HQ commander's bonuses? Also, will there be different types of bonuses for an HQ leader - say more strategic bonuses for higher ranking leaders and more tactical bonuses for lower ranked leaders?  Also, at what point (distance) will the command hierarchy be broken (will all units need to be on the same planet,system,sector, etc)?  Finally, if an HQ unit is damaged, does it still provide its full bonus(es)?
 

Offline Shiwanabe

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #516 on: December 16, 2017, 09:00:49 PM »
I've finalised the HQ components. There are 9, with command ratings (in tons) of 1250, 2500, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 250k, 1m, 4m.

All but the last three are available from the start. The last three are 10k, 20k and 40k RP. There should be sufficient options for a variety of different formation sizes and some army-level HQs.

A couple of questions:
Do those limits include the HQ itself?

Can we get integer multiples between each size? (Currently it's 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.5, 5, 4, 4 - Which just seems odd. Especially as a multiple of 2 feels inefficient.)
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #517 on: December 16, 2017, 10:48:23 PM »
Penetration Chance is (AP / Armour)^2

And death/killing chance appears to be a straight (Damage/HP) chance.

Right then, some math.

As previously calculated, the conventional Challenger tank has a 36% chance of penetrating the answer of the TN variant, a 60% chance of killing the TN variant if it penetrates and as such a 21.6% chance of killing its target on any given shot. I presume that Steve rounded to get to his 22% chance. It also has an anti personnel weapon with 6 shots but we're ignoring it. While it would be a factor in battle, it would make a killing blow maybe once every 400 shots, so can be neglected.

The TN variant, in contrast, has a 277% chance of penetrating, so it can't fail. It also has a 166.6...% chance of destroying its target on a hit, so it can't fail there either. Its anti personnel weapon has a 4.8% chance of striking a killing blow, and 6 shots per round. It'd on average delete an extra enemy tank every 4 rounds or so.

As such and roughly speaking, for a conventional force to effectively defeat a TN level 1 attack with the same weapons classes and number of weapons it has to outnumber its opponent somewhere between two and three to 1.

Against TN level 4 this gets worse. Not because the TN heavy gun is better, at guaranteed hit and destruction levels rate of fire is more important and that's the same, but because of the crew served anti personnel weapon. While the one in the Leman Russ is a Heavy variant, TN level 4 the multiplier is 10, and we can start our calculations from there. It has a 69.4% chance of piercing the conventional tank's armour, and a 55.55...% chance of killing the target on break through. This means it has an approximately 39% chance of killing an enemy tank. Per shot. And it gets 6.

So, abusing statistics in ways it shouldn't, I posit that a TN level 4 Challenger tank can kill 3.4 conventional tech Challengers per round, while the Challenger has a 1.2% chance of killing even 1 TN4 equivalent vehicle. It would, on average, need to shoot 83.333... times to guarantee a kill. A conventional tech force would need to outnumber a TN level 4 attacker 7 or 8 to one 22 to 25 to one to not be obliterated.

A smaller number than you might've anticipated, but still something that majorly favours the TN tech. The numbers will get more skewed until the TN tech force achieves an AP of 12 and a damage of 18 on its crew served anti personnel, as at that point the anti personnel gun is also a guaranteed hit and kill weapon, letting the TN force kill 7 enemy tanks with every round they fight. Further weapons advances will not impact the TN force's effective offensive capabilities, but armour advances will of course continue to matter.

A couple of questions:
Do those limits include the HQ itself?

Can we get integer multiples between each size? (Currently it's 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.5, 5, 4, 4 - Which just seems odd. Especially as a multiple of 2 feels inefficient.)

Historically, higher to lower command ratios have shifted between 2 and 5, with conscripts and militia more often approaching 5 lower commands to each higher command and more professional and elite formations more often 2 or 3 direct lower commands per higher command. This ignores things like company level attachments that serve as a regimental heavy artillery section, the signal unit or other small units of specialists. Those would skew things quite a bit if we counted them, because you can easily have half a dozen of those attached at the regimental or division level.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2017, 07:03:38 AM by Hazard »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #518 on: December 17, 2017, 05:35:52 AM »
A couple of questions:
Do those limits include the HQ itself?

Can we get integer multiples between each size? (Currently it's 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.5, 5, 4, 4 - Which just seems odd. Especially as a multiple of 2 feels inefficient.)

Everything up to 20k is assumed to be for a single formation, or small group of formations, so I have added a variety of sizes (some players may want different size base formations). 50k+ is intended for brigades, divisions and higher. The size of the HQ component is fixed at 500 tons (and therefore the same cost) from 50k, so that should be fine. If you have a division that is 150k, use the 250k HQ for example. There would be no difference in cost for a 150k HQ.

However, a formation cannot be attached to another formation with an equivalent or lower command rating, so is there is still a reason not to select the highest possible command rating.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2017, 11:53:37 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #519 on: December 17, 2017, 05:44:31 AM »
Great stuff Steve!  Had a few questions regarding HQ/commander bonuses:

Will units at the bottom of a command hierarchy receive the full bonuses of each HQ commander in that hierarchy or will they receive fractions of each HQ commander's bonuses? Also, will there be different types of bonuses for an HQ leader - say more strategic bonuses for higher ranking leaders and more tactical bonuses for lower ranked leaders?  Also, at what point (distance) will the command hierarchy be broken (will all units need to be on the same planet,system,sector, etc)?  Finally, if an HQ unit is damaged, does it still provide its full bonus(es)?

HQs will need to be on the same planet. If an HQ unit is destroyed, the commander will be killed if it is the only HQ unit in the formation. You can have multiple HQ units within a single formation, in which case, the chance of the commander being killed is equal to 1 / Number of HQs. If there are no HQ units remaining, you lose the commander benefit for that formation and for any formations lower in the hierarchy.

I should have mentioned at some point that an HQ unit will be needed to assign a commander to a formation :)

Lower level units will gain bonuses from higher level units in the hierarchy, albeit at reducing benefits for higher levels. So a very high point in the hierarchy will provide a very small bonus to a lot of units.

I haven't decided yet on if there will be any new bonus types.  I will tackle that when I get to the ground combat code.
 
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Offline King-Salomon

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #520 on: December 17, 2017, 06:49:34 AM »
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=9679. msg105668#msg105668 date=1513511071
HQs will need to be on the same planet.

Like most of it :)

but what I am wondering - for ships it is possible to get a bonus even if the ships are in an other sol system from there parent "HQ" - ground-units get it only when they are at the same planet?

Maybe it would be great if there could be some kind of "communication unit" which allows a high-class HQ to be in communication with a "System-HQ"/Army-HQ (maybe a new installation, costs 2400) which represents army-military staff for the whole sol-system (but not outside the sol-system)

the boni from that could be restricted to non-fighting skills as in a battle short communication is needed (on the other hand, fighting boni are allowed atm for ships)

just my thinking. . .  it seems just inconsistently to allow ships boni from outside but not for ground-units
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #521 on: December 17, 2017, 09:00:45 AM »
The gameplay reason is to avoid having very large hierarchies filled with formations with no commanders and relatively junior officers at the top.

An alternative that crossed my mind while asking the question would be to have some sort of "time in grade" requirement for promotion, with a game mechanic that allows (but penalizes) "out of zone" promotions by the player.  I didn't mention it because I couldn't think of a way to make it work, but since that's one of your concerns I think I'll throw it out there and see if anything sticks.... 

The idea is to let players quickly move good commanders up in rank (they are good commanders, after all), but have resistance to that movement from experience/political realities (to avoid the failure mode you're concerned about).  A few thoughts:

1)  Have an "experience/time in grade" clock, which sets the pace for normal advancement.  The idea is that a brand new Captain will have lower skills (read bonuses) than one who's been commanding a major combatant for 2 years.  So a newly promoted officer would get penalties to his/her command bonuses that would decay away over time.  If an officer got promoted up the chain too quickly, these penalties would compound and destroy the utility of said rapid advancement.  This is why navies have time-in-grade requirements for promotion; to avoid too-rapid promotion.

To be clear, the time-in-grade clock would be compared to a "can promote" duration (e.g. 5 years); if the officer has been in grade longer a promotion would be allowed and the clock would reset.  There might also be a "auto-promote" duration (e.g. 7 years) which would force promotion for political officers.

2)  Allow modifiers to the clock.  The big example here is battle experience: every battle where the officer was in command of an element might advance the clock by a fixed time; if the officer was serving in a staff role that time would be lower (I think this is what the medal mechanic is supposed to do in the current system).  In the absence of combat, a position in command of a ship or on a fleet staff might also run the clock faster than other positions; "unassigned" might run the clock more slowly.

3)  If you go down this road, I actually think you might want two clocks: one for experience and one for time in grade.  That way the political bonus could affect how quickly officers are promoted (time in grade clock would run more quickly for high political bonus), without running their clock faster on the experience front.

4)  Ageod's American Civil War (I & II) handles this in a cool way, except I don't see how to port the mechanic into Aurora.  When generals win battles, they rise or fall on the seniority chart for that rank, and occasionally become promotable.  The trick is that you can only promote the most senior general at a rank without paying a political penalty (negative effect on National Morale IIRC which affects productivity).  In Aurora terms, if you promote a politically un-connected officer past one with a high political rating, you would pay a price in terms of your empire's efficiency.  I can't think of such a morale rating in Aurora, though, to hook this into. If you can figure out a good penalty, then you could just allow out-of-zone promotions in the current system and not worry about the clock stuff discussed above.  Hmmm - maybe a penalty to command (and/or other) ratings that decays away with time, to abstract away inexperience and/or lack of legitimacy in the minds of the crew and/or superiors. If you did this, the decay should only happen when the officer is assigned - that defeats the exploit of rapid-promoting early, then putting the commander on a shelf while the penalty decays away.

Actually, now that I think of it, AACW is trying to do exactly the same abstraction that you are: a small number (~100?) of exceptional commanders in a sea of unnamed officers.  They abstract it through their "command points" abstraction, where bigger formations get an overall efficiency hit if they don't have a (named) commander with enough command points to manage the formation.  So the highest ranking general at a rank might only have a seniority of 3 (low numbers are higher rank).

5)  Not an idea for the above change, but something that just occurred to me: in chain-of-command succession, it seems like named officers always win over unnamed.  In other words, if I've got 6 ships in a TG, and only one has a named commander, that commander is in command of the TG even though there's 5 other unnamed ones that might be senior to the named one.

Like I said - I don't see a way to make this (out of zone promotions) work in Aurora, but it seems like a good way to reduce the burden of the "officer pyramid" if you can.  To be clear, the problem I think this solves is that the number of officers required to get to a new highest-level rank grows exponentially, so players end up tracking and assigning tons of low-level officers to support the much smaller set of captains and admirals.  It would be nice if the highest rank (read organizational skill) available in a fleet was more closely related to experience than to raw numbers.

Another thought: It would be nice if there were a mechanism where named officers could be "noticed" at all levels and have stats rolled at that point (or if the game managed unnamed officers behind the scenes with stats already rolled, but didn't display them to the player until some rank  threshold is reached).  This probability could then be skewed to let players focus more on the higher ranks, e.g. all admirals would be named, 1/2 the captains, and only 10% of the junior officers.  This would also solve the "problem" with named commanders always out-ranking unnamed commanders - if the ships with unnamed commanders had an actual commander assigned and displayed to the player, then one of their commanders might end up senior.  (You'd need to set it up so that popping a named commander onto a ship then removing him didn't change the unnamed commander to prevent players churning unnamed commanders to unnaturally get low ranking ones in command of ships.)  Even more interesting would be to have the unnamed officer stats actually affect combat, without the player being able to know the modifiers that are being applied. :)

John
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #522 on: December 18, 2017, 07:39:41 AM »
An alternative that crossed my mind. . .

<snip>

John

I find this a largely terrible idea.  The only reasosn for unnamed commanders to exist is that you (the player) have never thougt about them.  The instant you do actually care about a commander, they should stop being unnamed.  Aurora makes this trivially easy by having an actual 'Add Officer' button right there.

If you are at all worried about not having enough officers for every single one of them to have a job -- with a few left over -- then you are not building enough Academies.

Oh, and last time I checked there was a 'time in grade' mechanic -- officers are not eligible for (automatic) promotion within two years of their last promotion.  (Though of course, as 'Emperor' or whatever of your faction you are free to promote or demote whoever you like.)

Now, if we get a new 'automatic promotions' system where the player can set the rules for time-in-grade and ratio of X-1 rank to X rank (especially if this can be varid by rank) and other details I'll be thrilled.  Especially if I can finally turn off that Fnord-damned ". . . has been deemed surplus to requirements and let go from the service" bug.

 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #523 on: December 18, 2017, 09:25:57 AM »
Now, if we get a new 'automatic promotions' system where the player can set the rules for time-in-grade and ratio of X-1 rank to X rank (especially if this can be varid by rank) and other details I'll be thrilled.  Especially if I can finally turn off that Fnord-damned ". . . has been deemed surplus to requirements and let go from the service" bug.

You'd think that'd be less of a bug and more of a feature if you had to pay for your ranking officers. Aurora is kinda missing the cost that comes with maintaining a personnel pool on the bench, or on ships. We do have a monetary cost in VB6 on ground units, and the maintenance system gets you something close to a shipboard personnel cost, but it's all abstracted away in the cost of maintaining the ship's TN components.

It'd be nice if there was a credit cost associated with non-production facilities like Academies and Deep Space Tracking Stations, the generic personnel pool, the named officers depending on their rank, shipboard complements depending on skill level and if we could define the ratios for officers.
 

Offline King-Salomon

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #524 on: December 19, 2017, 01:58:51 PM »
after having read about the new "Forced Labour Camps" I am wondering if I have missed something about "Construction Brigades" in C#?

Will they still be there as atm or how will they be integrated in the new system?

Guess with some kind of "construction equipment"? and if so, will it be in different tech levels or will it be modified by as in VB7 with the "normal" production speed tech?

Was wondering as in VB7 the Construction Brigade is much larger and costly than the normal "basic fighting unit/Battalion" and how it will work in the C# system :)