Best Ground Units?

[Borealis4x (OP)]

What are the most effective Ground Unit designs?

I assume pairing light vehicles with medium AP and AV weapons is a good idea so you can be reasonably sure you can actually kill enemy ground units while still being able to fit a decent amount of vehicles in an element.

What about the 'Infantry Fighting Vehicle' (Medium Armor, Medium/Light Autocannon) or the 'Main Battle Tank' (Heavy Armor, HAV, CAP)?

Is it a good idea to put infantry even in your mechanized 'breakthrough' units so the can soak up shots?

Is there an advantage to putting FFDs in light vehicles?

Is there any reason not to put ARTY and HQ in heavy static armor?

etc, etc...

[Pedroig]

It really depends on what one considers "effective".  For defense, the best "bang for the buck" is a Medium Vehicle in Light Armor with Double Construction Modules set to non-combat.  Infantry HCAP is a very good "all rounder", for vehicles it tends to be best to fit them with the largest weapons available and put them in numbers which would counter your formation concepts.  (So if one is running two infantry divisions for ever armoured division, one would want to have a 2:1 ratio of AI v AV weapon platforms in the attacking formations, for defending it's more about weight, want as much "pressure" on cheap infantry which are fortified as possible, so usually go for a 8:1 ratio of them to anything else in their formations.)

Infantry in Infantry, Motorized, Mechanized, or Armor units do not slow them down at all, giving them Light Weapons and using them as a damage shield is a viable, if not cruel, tactic.

FFD's set to non-combat will rarely get hit as infantry, Light Vehicles is fine for attacking units though, just expensive.

Static heavy, primarily cost, especially with ARTY.  Since ARTY is normally not on the Front Line duty, it means either only ARTY is hitting it or there has been a breakthrough.  If the latter, no amount of armour will save it, for the former, depends on enemy composition, I find it not worth it on anything other than STO's.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general... if space is of little concern then more units is almost always better than less, that means less armour. If you have twice the amount of armour it is twice the cost thus half the firepower of two units. As many attacks will be overkill anyway then less armour is most often preferable. It is not always so but generally it will.

If you want to game the system you should always consider destroying enemy infantry first with specialised infantry killing units and hold heavier weapons back... this saves important supplies. Once most of the infantry is destroyed you can start employing the AT capable units. This means all units should have only one type of weapon, so not tanks with anti vehicle and anti infantry weapons but rather only one type.

Large formation is better than small as they are more likely to achieve breakthrough and also prevent breakthroughs.

Artillery is generally not very useful... if you use them don't assign them to support so they conduct counter battery instead...medium long range are best for this.

In general i find medium with light armour is the best vehicle in the game. Really big vehicles are not very useful... they simply have too little firepower for their cost.

[Garfunkel]

The system is robust enough that pretty much anything reasonable works well enough. Generally, you just want as much tonnage and firepower in the battle as possible. You don't need to sweat over the details.

But if you want to min-max etc, the there are a bunch of threads in Mechanics and General Discussion which have hashed out both the best bang for your BP on your planets for defence, as well as the most efficient tonnage-ratio for NPR homeworld invasions. Plus, certain tactics tricks, like the one Jorgen mentioned above.

[kilo]

The "best ground unit" depends upon the situation. On the defense, it is really advantageous to have numbers of lightly armored elements. These are a lot cheaper and you can bring more. Especially infantry is good on planets with harsh terrain. On the offensive, you are limited by production cost and transport capacity. This favors heavy armor over light armor and quality over quantity.

I field a lot of infantry with light armor and personal weapons as bullet sponges in defensive formations, as it takes a lot of time to overrun these elements. They get reinforced by heavier weapons. Static weapons can be devastating in combination with these elements when entrenched.
When attacking, you need more armor, as cheap infantry gets slaughtered by everything. I bring either infantry with the heaviest armor and possibly gene modding or tanks, as these are able to survive hits and many formations contain inf with cap.

Lastly, light autocannons can be great when engaging light vehicles, heavy infantry if HCAP is ineffective. Medium and heavier autocannons can be useful against armor if your weapons tech is advanced enough, as they give you more ROF compared to their anti-vehicle counterparts.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general I would agree that any army you create will be good enough... it is generally your technology level and amount of force that will win the day at the end of the day.

Make sure to bring more supplies than what you think is needed, you always need more than you think.

It is also true that if you build an army that is specific for invading you should armour them as much as you can, space can be a premium... at least to a degree. In the long term though I generally have some elite forces with all the trim in dedicated assault carriers, then a "medium" standard army for major invasions and defence. Then there is the garrison forces that is mainly infantry with light personal weapons and static defences... these are not really meant to win fights on their own... but will never take part in any active invasions.

It also is a bit funny... I did some testing the other day and 1000 infantry with LPW and 167 CAP infantry is better than 1000 Infantry with PW in a fight with each other... did not expect this to be true... but it seems so. It is the same cost. It is relatively close and in this setup random can effect the result allot.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

It also is a bit funny... I did some testing the other day and 1000 infantry with LPW and 167 CAP infantry is better than 1000 Infantry with PW in a fight with each other... did not expect this to be true... but it seems so. It is the same cost. It is relatively close and in this setup random can effect the result allot.

Looking at the numbers I'd say the result would be obvious. Why was it a surprise?

[Jorgen_CAB]

It also is a bit funny... I did some testing the other day and 1000 infantry with LPW and 167 CAP infantry is better than 1000 Infantry with PW in a fight with each other... did not expect this to be true... but it seems so. It is the same cost. It is relatively close and in this setup random can effect the result allot.

Looking at the numbers I'd say the result would be obvious. Why was it a surprise?

I had not made the tests before and thought that regular infantry was better than garrison troops supported with CAP infantry. It means they are a better way to defend your forces including killing infantry. They have a bigger size which also screen other more expensive forces from attack too. They will take up more space for an invasion army... but generally troop ships are not that expensive unless you must have allot of armoured, drop capable and fast ones, they don't cost maintenance so once built you can have them hang around forever at no cost. Over time, invasion size is not that big of a deal. Large invasions does not need fast powerful assault carriers, they need massive bulk of forces... only small invasions should be done with elite forces anyway. Maintain and upgrade forces over time is a costly endeavour when you have millions upon millions of troops. The ship to transport them can very much be a once time cost... maybe the occasional engine upgrade.

Infantry, especially the garrison/militia (LPW) troops role is to shield other troops and make the enemy waste high cost ammunition, they do this very well. I usually figured my garrison regiments or divisions to be, well weak... but after doing some testing where there are garrison infantry and static with CAP in large numbers too, they deal with enemy infantry really well. The only real role for the regular soldier is to take a bit less space in a space ship.

Well... I usually role-play allot anyway so it does not bother me personally at all... just was not expecting the weak infantry to actually to be that valuable with roughly a 1/8 the firepower against other infantry from regular infantry. I probably will have to re-evaluate my garrison forces combat power in general.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Were the weak infantry dug in? That alone would give insane bonuses even without the CAP.

[nuclearslurpee]

Well... I usually role-play allot anyway so it does not bother me personally at all... just was not expecting the weak infantry to actually to be that valuable with roughly a 1/8 the firepower against other infantry from regular infantry. I probably will have to re-evaluate my garrison forces combat power in general.

167 CAP fires as many shots as 1000 PW by themselves, at that point the extra 1000 PWL are just meatshields to keep the CAP alive as long as possible. And of course they contribute 1/16 the killing power of the PW which is admittedly rather negligible. The meatshield effect is very powerful in Aurora.

[Gyrfalcon]

I ran into this in my Terra Invictus game - 10,000 PWL with the lowest possible armor and weapons tech in the game and set to attack (abandoning fortifications) still makes an AMAZING tarpit that will take forever to kill. They can't kill anything themselves, but they'll absorb absurdly disproportionate firepower.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Were the weak infantry dug in? That alone would give insane bonuses even without the CAP.

Of course not... would make the test invalid...

The other issue here is also that the value of the PWL increase dramatically if your weapons technology is better than the opponents armour in addition to this... if worse it matter little as they already do so little damage anyway.

Anyway... defending forces with PWL infantry and Static units of various configuration is a seriously effective combat force from a cost perspective. Not from the perspective you care about your soldiers life much, but that is something else.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Well... I usually role-play allot anyway so it does not bother me personally at all... just was not expecting the weak infantry to actually to be that valuable with roughly a 1/8 the firepower against other infantry from regular infantry. I probably will have to re-evaluate my garrison forces combat power in general.

167 CAP fires as many shots as 1000 PW by themselves, at that point the extra 1000 PWL are just meatshields to keep the CAP alive as long as possible. And of course they contribute 1/16 the killing power of the PW which is admittedly rather negligible. The meatshield effect is very powerful in Aurora.

Yeah, I hear its important to have infantry even in an armored unit solely because they can soak up shots meant for the tanks.

Question is how much do you want to dedicate to the 'meat'? I usually have 160-200 infantry in a 5000 ton battalion formation with the rest being vehicles. But thats just my instincts.

[nuclearslurpee]

I usually go by roughly real-world analogues (very roughly, but still). I'd say my infantry battalions usually have closer to 300 infantry troops (usually PW) and the rest either supporting INF classes or vehicles depending on level of mechanization. I use regiments or brigades as my base formation size, so often I will do a structure like 3x infantry battalions and 1x tank battalion or vice-versa.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well... I usually role-play allot anyway so it does not bother me personally at all... just was not expecting the weak infantry to actually to be that valuable with roughly a 1/8 the firepower against other infantry from regular infantry. I probably will have to re-evaluate my garrison forces combat power in general.

167 CAP fires as many shots as 1000 PW by themselves, at that point the extra 1000 PWL are just meatshields to keep the CAP alive as long as possible. And of course they contribute 1/16 the killing power of the PW which is admittedly rather negligible. The meatshield effect is very powerful in Aurora.

Yeah, I hear its important to have infantry even in an armored unit solely because they can soak up shots meant for the tanks.

Question is how much do you want to dedicate to the 'meat'? I usually have 160-200 infantry in a 5000 ton battalion formation with the rest being vehicles. But thats just my instincts.

To be honest... I don't think there is any "best" ratio unless you are up against AI NPR that build from certain templates.

I just build my formations based on relatively realistic conditions and call it a day. So an APC might have about 8-10 infantry and an IFV about 6-8 infantry with support weapon infantry taking up 2-3 times the space in vehicles. Then you have support vehicles that have no infantry attached as I don't count the crew as infantry. Any formation with no vehicles are basically garrisons, so they are infantry and static units only.