With the new features to ground forces organization and construction coming in 2.2, I've thought about additional combat mechanics to make ground battles little less deterministic. Currently it's all about tech and tonnage, with only breakthroughs and fortifications providing surprises. It's also very difficult, if not impossible, to model some aspects of actual wars. However, we probably don't want to make ground combat too complicated and I to something that takes more effort than space battles.
Recent events made me think about the importance of the three things from the topic and how they can, and have, surprised military planners in the past if said planners have been unduly fixated on hardware and numbers. Military history is full of examples where the underdog has defeated a technologically or numerically superior forces. So here's what I've been thinking:
1. Each unit / element should have a morale and training value. These could be hidden and only shown at formation level as an average. The exact numbers are not that important but a scale from 0 to 100 probably works well enough. After construction, unit / element starts with 100 morale and 0 training. Additional training points will be gained over time as the unit is 'idle' - though if it isn't too difficult, then assigning formations to train where they consume supplies would be a great addition. Training value then impacts how 'accurate' the unit / element is in battle. Purpose is that poorly trained units perform badly in combat whereas highly trained ones perform well. Actual damage would still be decided by weapon tech and modules.
Morale could also be tied to race militancy rating and higher training value could increase it up to 100. This would be a nice way to differentiate races more.
2. In any case, combat losses should decrease morale but high training slows this. As morale gets low enough, there is a chance that the formation 'breaks' perhaps tied to percentage of total number of units lost so that small formations aren't unduly punished. Once a formation 'breaks' it cannot achieve breakthroughs or even fire and it loses terrain and fortification bonuses, making it an easy target for destruction.
So a poorly trained formation would struggle to 'hit' enemy formations while at the same time it would be at risk of 'breaking' if it suffers significant damage. Building lot of formations would still help as the incoming damage would be spread around but this would give smaller but highly trained formations a chance.
3. Organization would be a value tied to all headquarters and act as sort of an organisation wide bonus/malus to every formation in it. There's probably a better name for it, maybe 'control' since 'command' is already used by HQ modules. What it represents is the overall C4ISR ability of a large military force. This would require a new technology line but it could introduce sort of ECM/ECCM feature to ground combat. Alternatively, or additionally, HQs could have two manually adjustable values, one for 'command' size and another for 'C4ISR' capability but tech could improve the bang for your buck that you get. That way your garrison forces could still have cheap headquarters since they don't need more but your NPR home world invasion army deserves the expensive toys.
This value would then be 'consumed' in battle as the organization loses HQ units. High value would increase the chance for breakthroughs while a low value would decrease it. Low enough and your formations would be unable to perform them at all. High enough and your agile, well led troops achieve them all the time, making it a force multiplier like it is in real life.
This value could also be modified by additional ground and space assets. A ECM module for light vehicles would degrade enemy C4ISR rating, same as a ship in orbit with the same module. Ground support fighters could have a new ECCM mission where they go specifically after enemy ECM units. STO formations could prioritise ships in orbit that carry ECM modules. This would probably need to be separate from the current, space battle ECM module.
These additions would both mirror real world experiences and bring in a new layer to ground combat that shouldn't be too complex as it would mostly require preplanning which is the bread and butter of Aurora already.
Thoughts?