Anyone done testing on whether ships or ground forces are cheaper for PPV?

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Reading Steve's Escape from Earth playthrough; a couple times, he deals with unrest due to a lack of protection by building or moving ground forces. I was curious if anyone knows whether that's cheaper/easier than using ships. It could be that he just did it for flavor, but I could see it being a good alternative in some situations.

[Froggiest1982]

Reading Steve's Escape from Earth playthrough; a couple times, he deals with unrest due to a lack of protection by building or moving ground forces. I was curious if anyone knows whether that's cheaper/easier than using ships. It could be that he just did it for flavor, but I could see it being a good alternative in some situations.

I am not entirely sure ground forces have anything to do with it.

I seem to remember that system protection goes by ships while ground units contribute to the colony unrest reduction.
I actually think that if ground forces were contributing the amount was extremely low anyway.

There are 2 values, so if the value on the left is higher than the value on the right then the ground forces are enough to overcome unrest due to either overcrowding or not enough system protection or both.

On the economy summary screen you have also the modifier in percentage of how much ground unit are countering unrest.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

...Huh. Is that stuff that changed from VB6? Or did I just never understand it properly? I could've sworn I remembered having to park ships in orbit around a colony to get them to calm down.

[Froggiest1982]

...Huh. Is that stuff that changed from VB6? Or did I just never understand it properly? I could've sworn I remembered having to park ships in orbit around a colony to get them to calm down.

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Unrest

As far as I remember, unrest was always possible to be countered by ground forces. Obviously in some cases you need tons of them.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Well, I guess that's another way I didn't understand things when I was last playing. I just kinda bumbled along and hoped the numbers turned out good.

[nuclearslurpee]

Well, I guess that's another way I didn't understand things when I was last playing. I just kinda bumbled along and hoped the numbers turned out good.

The term we use around here is "role-playing". 


I guess I should actually contribute to the thread, though. Basically, ships and units do two things:

Ships provide PPV (Planetary Protection Value) based on their weapon power - which means ships with a lot of cheap weapons (plasma carronades) provide a lot of PPV even if they are not combat-effective. The population of your larger colonies (over 10 million, excluding your capital) require a certain PPV value summed over all the ships in system to feel safe and secure (meaning you can put a fleet at Earth and your pops on Mars and Pluto will feel safe at home). If the PPV requirement is not met your citizens will feel unsafe and unrest will go up.

Ground units do not provide PPV but do provide a suppression value that can reduce unrest. I'm not sure, but I believe the formula is SQRT(size) * number of units for each type of ground unit present on the planet, which means the best suppression units per ton/BP are INF with PWL. These can reduce unrest on a planet, but since you can have multiple colonies gaining unrest from PPV it is usually going to be better to just station some ships in-system instead of building a new ground formation every time a colony hits 10 million. Of course you want garrisons and such in most colonies anyways, so it may be a moot point depending on the exact values involved.

If you want to cheese PPV, just build a "ship" that is nothing but plasma cannons without even an engine or a fire control and plop it down in-system. Call it a "system defense platform" if it makes you feel better about the cruel deception you are committing against your citizens.

(Disclaimer: I might be wrong, and it may be that the population demands that you have at least one fire control, etc. before they'll accept your "ship" as a real defense. If so, add whatever is needed since it's probably a good idea to at least make the ship able to fire its weapons just in case, the same general principle applies though - load a cheap hull with a lot of plasma guns and call it whatever makes the people happy.)

[Michael Sandy]

If you want cheap PPV that is actually somewhat useful, make a barely mobile space station with base tech railguns.  Because the weapons are so cheap, you can repair maintenance failures forever, so you can easily get an engineering lifespan of 20+ years.  A short life support endurance is fine because it is orbiting an inhabited colony.  For its cost, it can shoot down a significant number of missiles.  A 60 railgun monitor could cost 400-600 BP or so, depending on how economical you went.  In VB6, you could provide less generators than needed to power the weapons.  But reduced rate of fire isn't a problem if you are facing box launchers or anything else with a reduced rate of fire.

Keep in mind the maintenance issues, and the ease of emplacing or removing the defenses.

Ground troops can deal with unrest from overcrowding where ships can't, so you will likely want some ground troops as well.

[Barkhorn]

I have had good results, both from a roleplay perspective and an effectiveness perspective, with building 1000 ton AMM platforms.  6-8 size 1 launchers and magazines for 3-4 reloads will fit in 1000 tons.  You don't really need more reloads because you can stockpile thousands of missiles in the population and just reload via ordnance transfer station.  These platforms are easily moved either via carrier or a tug, they cheaply provide PPV, and they can actually be useful.  I also put STO weapons on the planet to cover the platforms, though this doesn't help with PPV.

I have 30,000 ton laser-armed platforms I park on important jump points, which also provide PPV.  They work great, just remember to bring a recreation station so they don't run out of deployment time.