Invasion Army composition?

[Theoatmeal2 (OP)]

I will soon have enough ships to blast theirs to pieces. However their planet is enormous with 2-3 times the EM signature of earth. This will probably mean a lot of ground forces. I just researched drop pods and I have a lot of time in my hands for research due to neutronium shortage. What should I prioritize, power armor?, Orbital fighters?, something else?
What do you bring along for an invasion?

[Garfunkel]

NPR ground forces have more infantry than vehicles, generally. They also might have several million tons of ground formations.

You need a staging ground somewhere near and by near we mean preferably less than 8 hours away. Or you need to have sufficient number of transports to drop large enough first wave that it doesn't get completely overwhelmed in the first 8-hour combat round.

The most efficient way of gaming the mechanics means that you want to drop as many Ultra-Heavy Vehicles with as many Heavy Crew-served Anti-Personnel modules as possible. Obviously with the thickest armour possible. If you can't build UHVs yet, then go with Super-Heavies or Heavies. If you can't even build Heavy Vehicles, then start building medium vehicles while you research Heavy vehicles. Because it will likely take you a decade to build a sufficiently large invasion force unless you have a ridiculous number of GFCC's so putting them to use on Day 1 is important.

Once your initial wave has cleared out most/all of the enemy infantry, you can follow up with vehicles carrying AV weaponry. Those weapons are more expensive, take more space and eat more supplies, so ideally you do not want to waste any of their shots on enemy infantry as that is complete overkill.

The enemy might also have a massive number of STO's on the planet. Careful reconnaissance is necessary. You'll probably have to bombard the STO units from space to allow your invasion to take place.

[serger]

Build more, more, more Ground Force Training Facilities, while keeping those you have busy with a fabrication of supply and rear HQ non-combat elements.
Research armour and one of energy weapon caliber techs* (the one you have already researched or the cheapest one) to the point in which you'll have 1 or 2 tiers advantage, then design and build "infantry-cleaners" in numbers.
You can build auxiliary meat shield (PWL inf. in numbers) if your shipyards are capable enough to provide enormous transport volumes, while your relevant techs are not good enough to build impenetrable heavy assault machines.
You can also build light and/or medium vehicles with CSAPs instead of meat shield if your techs are good enough to turtle enemy PW and CSAPs with these vehicles, yet not good enough to build heavy assault machines, impenetrable for enemy heavy anti-tank guns.
Do note that any armour can be penetrated with any non-zero-pen armament, it's just a question of probabilities and numbers of hits, so any super-hyper-armored titan can be knocked down by massive rifle fire.

Any kind of bombardment is smashing your loot so do it only if it's absolutely necessary.

(*) Laser Focal Size, Railgun Type, Meson Focal Size, Particle Beam Strength or Carronade Calibre

[kilo]

Offensive and defensive armies are very different in unit type and composition. Entrenchment can make infantry and static units extremely hard to kill, but it requires preparation. This is why it is suicide to use infantry on the attack. The defender is sitting there with entrenchment 6 and your forces are in the open.
The elements used for offensive action require units with enough armor to be nearly invulnerable to small arms fire and machine guns in the first wave. Later waves of ground forces can contain anti armor elements.
Elements used in defensive positions should be build up from three different unit types. The first one is regular infantry with personal weapons. They are on front line duty to kill the enemy infantry and soak up most of the enemy fire. Against vehicles you will need anti vehicle emplacements. These are heavy static fortifications with at guns. Last but not least, STOs can be quite deadly for bombarding ships and troop transports.

PS: Bring more ground supplies. I know that you are a cheap bastard You will need MORE 

[serger]

Ow, yeah. Research Ground Combat Construction Rate.

[serger]

Also check enemy planet's temperature, pressure, gravity and terrain.
It's possibly worth to add 1 or 2 relevant capabilities to your assault units. Don't try to add more then 3 capabilities per unit, because their cost penalties are multiplicative, so you'll get very expensive very specialized troops.

[themousemaster]

Personally, I like to start with a large force of light-weapon infantry; no supplies, no backup, just as many PWL no-armor infantry as I can pack into some transports.  The goal is, in the few rounds they live, to get as much info on the stats of the enemy forces as possible (numbers AND tech levels)

When it's time to go for it... you can either game the system as stated in the posts above mine, or develop specific counters.

As far as "force size" though, since the largest Troop Transport bay is 5K (and not that hard to get up to in terms of research spent), I tend to make a "division" as close to multiples of 5K in size (without going over) as possible, as it makes the logistics of "how to design my troop transports" as easy as possible.

And, of course, always have LOG vehicles behind them.  Any enemy force you can kill in the 10 turns it takes for a unit to run out of it's in-built supplies... isn't one you probably need to spend much time preparing for ;p

[nuclearslurpee]

In practice, nearly any composition will work as long as you bring enough mass to the fight. Remember that the signature of enemy forces detected by active sensors is reduced by the fortification level, so you may face as many as 6x the tons of enemy troops when you land compared to what you see on sensors. In practice this means you often need 5m or 10m tons of troops to take an NPR homeworld, given that you want to attack with a 2:1 or 3:1 advantage at least, maybe even 5:1 or better into very rough terrain (jungle mountain, for example). Either way you need to think in the multiple millions of tons (unless using SHV or UHV which are special cases and really bordering on an exploit against NPRs which cannot adapt to these fearsome weapons), which means building up your forces years to decades in advance. Much like every other part of Aurora, ground forces cannot be whipped up in a few months unless you are playing a truly massive empire with peak WH40K levels of production.

Otherwise, ground forces in Aurora tend to be pretty decently balanced in terms of build points, so almost any composition will be acceptable. If you land 10m tons of infantry, you will take a lot of losses but you can mass those 10m tons pretty quickly and put out a very high volume of fire. If you land 1m tons of super-heavy armor, you won't take very many losses and can win by attrition more so than volume of fire, but those 1m tons will take as long to build as 10m tons of infantry.

The primary consideration is to make sure that you have sufficient anti-infantry weapons (PW + CAP), as the NPR ground forces are infantry-heavy, but also some anti-vehicle weapons to deal with the heavy forces. Anti-vehicle weapons can be landed in a second wave if you want to reduce the logistical burden of your offensive in terms of GSP consumption, but this is not necessary on a tactical level as long as you bring enough supplies.

Which brings up the last important point - bring a lot of logistics elements. Some 10% to 20% of your force will need to be LOG modules depending on the terrain and how long of a campaign you can expect. Elsewhere I have made a long post on the subject which gives some ideas of how to estimate the logistical needs. These days I am liking a mixed approach with INF+LOG-S integrated to every formation (using 15k-25k ton formations) to the tune of 10% or 15% of the total tonnage per formation, with a reserve of LVH+LOG held by higher HQs or supply dump formations. LVH+LOG are BP-inefficient but having some for the flexibility makes managing large armies easier. You can also rely on the replenishment mechanic introduced in 1.12, and only use infantry logistics for better BP efficiency.

[Jorgen_CAB]

If we talk about efficiency in some form in a none too gamey fashion I think that medium armour armed only with CAP weapon for the initial assault is the more efficient on terms of killing power and durability. You have to build both the troops and the ships to get them there as well.

Otherwise infantry is actually best at killing other infantry as you get more guns to kill them faster... as long as you have a slight tech advantage in at least armour you will do just fine with this.


Super heavy vehicles is a bit broken against NPR as they don't have any defences against them so go for that if you like, but I don't like to game the system in that way.


I have done some multi faction ground combat and then all is fair. Dropping just armour can become a nightmare as all the opponents heavy weapons will shred them and be protected by their infantry at the same time. If you only drop infantry they will keep their anti armour forces in reserve as to not waste supplies and again shred your forces... that leave a well balanced force for invasion is necessary.

In resource terms then you should build your troops as cheap as possible as that is most efficient BP per killing power... more guns is better than expensive armoured troops. But when you invade you need as expensive troops and as good armour as possible because loading space on your ships has priority. So, you need the troops to be as durable as possible for the space the take up on the ships. Defending troops don't have this problem at all. Unless you actually care about the lives of your soldier and want to give them the best chances to survive for RP purposes then low armour to keep costs down is more efficient unless space is a restriction.