Power Armor As Its Own Unit

[Borealis4x (OP)]

What do you think of Power Armor becoming its own type of unit; heavier than infantry but packing two weapon slots, having more maneuver, and possibly being able to drop/board without needing special transport bays?

As it stands currently there is nothing very special about power armor other than it provides some extra armor to your troops. This fair, obviously, but pretty unexciting and not even the main draw of a self-powered military suit. What drives power-armor development IRL is its ability to give its user enhanced strength, speed, and endurance, with extra protection being a minor factor if it is one at all. Good Power Armor imo always has integrated features that distinguish it from a mere suit of armor, like integrated weapons, targeting software, jetpacks, and so on.

You could easily replace the current +1 armor PA with generic 'Improved'/Advanced Armor' upgrades. I already rename it that in my head since I hate the idea of every grunt in the army getting their own set of Heavy Power Armor once the economy allows it. PA units should be elite, costly, difficult to train, and make up the specialized core of your army where you need low numbers to do a lot of heavy lifting, like with boarding actions or taking outposts. 

[TheTalkingMeowth]

If you want the flavor of power armor with integrated "cool stuff," consider using light vehicles and calling them mechs, or battle frames, or what have you. Light vehicles can mount MAV (and HCAP?), which infantry cannot.

Can't board, but they play differently than "mere" up armored infantry.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

If you want the flavor of power armor with integrated "cool stuff," consider using light vehicles and calling them mechs, or battle frames, or what have you. Light vehicles can mount MAV (and HCAP?), which infantry cannot.

Can't board, but they play differently than "mere" up armored infantry.

Well that's the thing, Power Armor's is essentially a vehicle that can go where vehicles generally couldn't. At least that's how I've always looked at it.

[nuclearslurpee]

Absolutely nothing is stopping you from calling your "vehicle" units mechas or heavy power armor if you want to. Granted, a VEH+CAP/CAP for example weighing in at 42 tons might seem a bit much, but an INF+PW weighs in at 5 tons with much of that being abstracted as transport weight for additional gear, supplies, etc. rather than the unit itself so I don't see why the same can't apply here. It's all a matter of headcanon.

Otherwise, I don't see what another new unit type would offer that doesn't already take away a role from an existing unit type. You're basically proposing an infantry unit with the weapons capability of medium vehicles, that's a lot of functional overlap.

As for the IRL parallels, Aurora has always indulged more the fantasy side of sci-fi than the hard, realistic side. Even though the level of detail and such is quite extreme the actual lore of the game is fairly "soft" and really intended to be flexible to whatever headcanon the player wants rather than sticking close to realistic physics and military doctrines. I think the current way power armor is implemented works well both mechanically and in terms of RP flexibility.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Absolutely nothing is stopping you from calling your "vehicle" units mechas or heavy power armor if you want to. Granted, a VEH+CAP/CAP for example weighing in at 42 tons might seem a bit much, but an INF+PW weighs in at 5 tons with much of that being abstracted as transport weight for additional gear, supplies, etc. rather than the unit itself so I don't see why the same can't apply here. It's all a matter of headcanon.

Otherwise, I don't see what another new unit type would offer that doesn't already take away a role from an existing unit type. You're basically proposing an infantry unit with the weapons capability of medium vehicles, that's a lot of functional overlap.

As for the IRL parallels, Aurora has always indulged more the fantasy side of sci-fi than the hard, realistic side. Even though the level of detail and such is quite extreme the actual lore of the game is fairly "soft" and really intended to be flexible to whatever headcanon the player wants rather than sticking close to realistic physics and military doctrines. I think the current way power armor is implemented works well both mechanically and in terms of RP flexibility.

Light vehicles are not a good stand-in for power armor due to their weight and not being able to board ships or be trained in advanced infantry tactics.

As for role-play, I think it would be enhanced by renaming power armor to something more generic like Improved/Advanced armor like I recommended. That would be much more descriptive of what the upgrade does but is still vague enough for the player to project their own meaning onto was it is. Obviously the current name infringed on my RPing to motivate me to make a thread complaining about it, so I don't think its flexible enough.

[shock]

I think its fine as is, there isn't really any mechanical area for them to be interesting.   Mobility doesn't really exist, and giving something a jet pack wouldn't make it harder to hit then inf behind cover.   Im not sure 2 weapons makes any physical since, as how is  a single person firing two weapons at the same time?  You could argue AI is doing the targeting, but if AI was that good why would inf even exist any more.   A bonus to aiming is something i could see with better vision/sensors, but training kinda covers the hit chance mechanic.

[Droll]

I think its fine as is, there isn't really any mechanical area for them to be interesting.   Mobility doesn't really exist, and giving something a jet pack wouldn't make it harder to hit then inf behind cover.   Im not sure 2 weapons makes any physical since, as how is  a single person firing two weapons at the same time?  You could argue AI is doing the targeting, but if AI was that good why would inf even exist any more.   A bonus to aiming is something i could see with better vision/sensors, but training kinda covers the hit chance mechanic.

Extra weapon also doesn't make sense when light vehicles only have 1 weapon.

[Zap0]

Power Armor units as a way to use small MAV is something I've wanted for a bit. Maybe HCAP to use against other Power Armor too, but is that enough niche to justify a new unit type?

[liveware]

I would personally be happy to see at least more than 2 levels of power armor tech (maybe 4 instead?). That might allow for more interesting and diverse unit designs and seems like it would be relatively easy to implement compared to an entirely new unit class.

[vorpal+5]

I would be on Borealis side here. Power armor should really be more than a minor upgrade but a class on its own, rather specialized, rare and costly. Picture WH40K power armor, for boarding combat and special missions.

i.e. you have 10.000 infantry guards, alongside 120 power-armored guys. And that's it. This kind of ratio. Powerful, almost as a battle tank, very costly, very rare and specialized.

[nuclearslurpee]

I would be on Borealis side here. Power armor should really be more than a minor upgrade but a class on its own, rather specialized, rare and costly. Picture WH40K power armor, for boarding combat and special missions.

i.e. you have 10.000 infantry guards, alongside 120 power-armored guys. And that's it. This kind of ratio. Powerful, almost as a battle tank, very costly, very rare and specialized.

I'm not sure that would really work in Aurora, though. At present, there's really nothing stopping you from building 10,000 of the power-armored guys. They're as strong as a battle tank? Well, right now you can build 10,000 tanks if you want to, and in fact by that measure power armored soldiers would be far stronger than tanks by virtue of tonnage efficiency - or if they're not, then again why bother having the unit class at all?

With Aurora's mechanics at present, ironically (given the level of detail) we lack the granularity to model small elite forces (other than boarding marines) since the training time is based entirely on the unit's build cost. There's not really any mechanic in place to limit a player to building only X number of an elite unit besides raw BP cost in a given time period, plus the need for tonnage efficiency on the offensive means that it's still going to be optimal to deploy these "elite units" in a mass formation rather than as force multipliers for a basic infantry formation.

[vorpal+5]

To refine my point(s). They would have all the benefits of the infantry class, so boarding and entrenching, but cost way more. And probably would be less powerful than a tank, on a 1 to 1 basis, but would still hold quite their own if you compare tonnage usage.

That would be, said otherwise, as if you can build tech level +2 infantry, armor-wise. But they would cost something like 20x the cost of your infantry with latest armor level. So terribly inefficient, economy wise, but stronger on a 1 to 1 basis ... perfectly fit for small scale engagements (boarding, small scale raids and capital ships security?), not for the large ones.

[nuclearslurpee]

To refine my point(s). They would have all the benefits of the infantry class, so boarding and entrenching, but cost way more. And probably would be less powerful than a tank, on a 1 to 1 basis, but would still hold quite their own if you compare tonnage usage.

That would be, said otherwise, as if you can build tech level +2 infantry, armor-wise. But they would cost something like 20x the cost of your infantry with latest armor level. So terribly inefficient, economy wise, but stronger on a 1 to 1 basis ... perfectly fit for small scale engagements (boarding, small scale raids and capital ships security?), not for the large ones.

The issue I'm trying to raise here, which I'm not sure I'm getting across, is that presently Aurora doesn't have a mechanic to make them cost "20x the cost" without massively overpowering the unit.

Currently, for every unit type except those with HQ components, the cost is equal to the unit size (in HS) times the base (not racial) armor of the unit, multiplied by any added capabilities. So for an easy example, a plain INF+CAP costs 0.24 BP, while a LVH+CAP has twice the size and base 2 armor thus costing 0.96 BP or 4x as much, and a VEH+2xCAP at 52 tons and 4 base armor costs 4.16 BP or about 17x as much. With the game mechanics in place, the new unit type being proposed would have to either be essentially a VEH with slightly different base stats or else an immensely over-armored infantry (like, base 8 or 10 armor) to the point where game balance would be seriously compromised as such a unit would hard-counter both CAP (by armor) and AV (by weight of numbers).

So in terms of adding a new base unit type to the game, in order for it to work Steve would have to program an exception for a new unit class which is the opposite of the direction he's been taking the game in the C# era. I suppose a reasonable compromise would be to add a new capability (in the same area as the terrain/environment capabilities) giving INF the ability to dual-wield in exchange for a hefty cost multiplier along with a damage boost of say +1 tech level (+2 would get truly ridiculous). Even then mechanically I'm not sure it works well, either it's strictly superior to regular INF per ton and you mass-produce them anyways, or the survivability is not good enough given that doubling the tonnage means it takes half as many hits to wipe out the formation.

[Garfunkel]

The idea that a power armour carries multiple weapon types is a bit silly, to be honest. At that point, it's a vehicle. We've had this same discussion many times before whether it's about Battle Mechs or Hover Tanks or WH40k Titans. The current system allows you to RP your units in whatever way you want. Mechanically there is no movement nor manoeuvre, so there's no difference between a helicopter or a hover tank or a walker or a steam train with a gun on it; they are all vehicles if you so want. There is no tactical or operational aspect on ground combat, only the strategic level.

There is no reason to add power armour on its own - it's an upgrade to infantry just like gene modding and specialized training. If you want tougher, more bad ass space marines? Research higher weapon and armour techs, turn them into genetically engineered super soldiers, give them all possible specialized training & equipment.

[vorpal+5]

@Nuclearslurpee. Ok got it, I did not understood your point before.