In my current campaign, I have reached the point where I was about to design a troop transport. I immediately realised that with all the changes to commercial shipping, the troop transport module was seriously undersized. The Troop Transport Bay, which can carry a full division, is only size 20 (1000 tons), or about 40% of the size of the module that carries 10,000 colonists in cryo. I started playing about with different ideas and eventually decided to make a few changes to the whole ground troop model and also to both the transport and delivery of troops. None of these changes affect ground combat mechanics; just the troops involved and the method of getting them into combat.
The main change for the ground troop model is that I am assuming that combat power goes way up with the introduction of TN tech and that much smaller units (in terms of manpower) will likely be the norm. Think powered armour along the lines of Starship Troopers (the book, not the film) or the Posleen War or even the zoots from the Honorverse. The new manoeuver unit will be the battalion (which I am sure someone suggested a few months ago). The existing Heavy Assault Division, Mobile Infantry Division, Assault Infantry Division, Garrison Division and Replacement Division will become the Heavy Assault Battalion, Mobile Infantry Battalion, Assault Infantry Battalion, Garrison Battalion and Replacement Battalion and the stats will remain the same. The Engineer Division becomes the Engineer Regiment and will be about four times the size of the various battalions. I am assuming that for purposes of Aurora a battalion is about 500 men, which I know is even smaller than a regular battalion but each trooper will be far more effective.
The HQ division becomes a Brigade HQ and you will be able to attach battalions to a Brigade HQ. This will be done on a more permanent basis rather than the ad hoc situation at the moment. You will be able to transfer battalions between Brigade HQs with some penalty yet to be decided; probably a morale loss that will recover over time. When a Battalion is supported by its Brigade HQ in combat, it will gain the combat bonus of the HQ commander as well as its own commander. A new Divisional HQ has been added, which is expensive at 250 BP and will require a R4 commander. Brigades will be attached to Divisions in much the same way as battalions will be attached to Brigades. If both its Brigade and Divisional HQ are present, a battalion will get the ground combat bonus from both HQ commanders as well as it's own commander, so it is worth trying to preserve divisional integrity if you fight a battle with that many units involved. There is a maximum of four battalions to a brigade and four brigades to a division. Both HQ units are the same size as a battalion. I am assuming they contain the HQ staff plus various support assets such as artillery, etc.. Incidentally, the small units will make the commander assignments more realistic - no more junior officers commanding divisions.
Two new combat units have also been added. The Marine Battalion and the Marine Company. The Marine Battalion costs 180 BP, which is the same as the Heavy Assault battalion, and has a base attack strength of 10 and a base defence strength of 10 (compared to 12/12 for the HVA and 10/5 for the much cheaper Assault Infantry at 100 BP). The advantages of the Marine Battalion are that it can split into Marine Companies and both Marine units are very effective in fighting boarding actions against ships and PDCs. Other units may still carry out boarding action but Marines are specially trained for that situation and use double their normal combat strength in a boarding action. The Marine Company costs 36 and has stats of 2/2. There are five Marine Companies to a Battalion and each is approximately 100 men. If you want the best attack strength per BP spent when attacking a hostile world then Assault Infantry (82nd Airborne?) is the best option. If you want maximum all-around combat power on a per-battalion basis then go for Heavy Assault. If you want the best troops for attacking a PDC or a ship, then Marines would be the best value for money. The existing Low Tech Armour Division and Low Tech Infantry Division remain divisional sized and retain their low combat strength. They are equal to ten battalions for transport purposes.
Finally, two new units named the Infantry Cadre and the Armour Cadre have been added that will give the Low Tech Armour and Infantry units a useful function after TN tech is introduced. At the moment you can convert low tech units into Replacement Divisions so they can make good combat losses for the TN units. However, that can result in a lot more replacement divisions that you actually need. Instead you now convert them into their respective Cadre equivalents, which represent the best officers and men of the old unit. When you build a new TN ground unit, you can use up a Cadre to reduce the cost of the new unit. The Infantry Cadres will reduce the cost of Mobile Infantry, Assault Infantry, Garrisons and Engineers by 40. The Armour Cadres will reduce the cost of Heavy Assault, Marine Battalions, and both HQ units by 60. Replacement Battalions still exist but you now just build them normally for 40 BP.
Because of the introduction of higher formations, you may want to see where all of a division's units are located. Therefore the Ground Units tab now has four options for displaying ground units:
1) Units at the selected population
2) Units at the selected population plus PDCs on the same planet
3) Units at the selected population plus PDCs in the same planet and ships in orbit of the planet
4) All ground units
The Troop Transport Bay is now a civilian system and costs less to research. Rather than Size 20, Cost 50, Crew 40, it is now Size 50 (2500 tons), Cost 40 and Crew 10. It can hold 1 battalion. There is also a Small Troop Transport Bay, which is only Size 10, Cost 10 and can hold one company. This relatively small size will allow some larger warships to carry their own marine complements. As an example of the updated Bay, here is a commercial-engined troopship and a slightly larger version that is jump-capable.
Enterprise class Troop Transport 39950 tons 507 Crew 1089 BP TCS 799 TH 2250 EM 0
2816 km/s Armour 1-104 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 17 MSP Max Repair 40 MSP
Troop Capacity: 8 Battalions Cargo Handling Multiplier 10
Commercial Ion Engine (15) Power 150 Fuel Use 7% Signature 150 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 64.4 billion km (264 days at full power)
This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposesOmaha class Troop Transport 45000 tons 622 Crew 1241.8 BP TCS 900 TH 2250 EM 0
2500 km/s JR 2-25(C) Armour 1-112 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 17 MSP Max Repair 144 MSP
Troop Capacity: 5 Battalions
JC45K Commercial Jump Drive Max Ship Size 45000 tons Distance 25k km Squadron Size 2
Commercial Ion Engine (15) Power 150 Fuel Use 7% Signature 150 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 700,000 Litres Range 400.0 billion km (1851 days at full power)
TN/SPS-1 Navigation Sensor (1) GPS 750 Range 7.5m km Resolution 75
This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposesI have also changed the Troop Transport Bay so it takes time to load and unload troops, which is done instantly at the moment. The base time to unload troops is 10 days but cargo handling systems can be mounted to dramatically reduce this. One CHS will reduce it to 2 days and a second to just 1 day. However, as you can imagine, that is still a long time if you are trying to land troops in hostile territory. Therefore there are also two brand new systems to get around this problem. The 'Combat Drop Module - Battalion' and 'Combat Drop Module - Company' require the same time to load as a Troop Transport Bay but can unload instantly. They are also much smaller, at 20% the size of their equivalent bays, as it is assumed the troops are loaded in a combat drop configuration rather than requiring living space. They are 50% more expensive than the equivalent Troop Transport Bays. The major drawback of the Combat Drop Modules is that the troops won't appreciate being left in there indefinitely so after some time (to be determined but probably about a week), their morale will start to fall.
With sizes of just 10 and 2 respectively, the combat drop modules can be fitted on to much smaller hulls. For example, the Eagle class Dropship below is only 1000 tons and the Phoenix class assault shuttle is just 170 tons, which could allow you to get them close to a planet when larger ships may get shot out of the sky by planetary defences. The Phoenix relies on sheer speed to avoid incoming fire while it streaks past the planet to drop its company of marines. The larger Eagle has much longer range and can withstand a couple of decent hits while still being small enough to avoid many sensors. It carries a full battalion.
Eagle class Dropship 1000 tons 36 Crew 136.4 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 3-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 16% IFR: 0.2% Maintenance Capacity 43 MSP Max Repair 60 MSP
Drop Capacity: 1 Battalion
Fast Attack Ion Engine (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 700% Signature 120 Armour 0 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 12.9 billion km (24 days at full power)
This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposesPhoenix class Assault Shuttle 170 tons 7 Crew 25.9 BP TCS 3.4 TH 36 EM 0
10588 km/s Armour 1-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 34% IFR: 0.5% Maintenance Capacity 0 MSP Max Repair 15 MSP
Drop Capacity: 1 Company
FTR Ion Engine (1) Power 36 Fuel Use 7000% Signature 36 Armour 0 Exp 25%
This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a fighter for production and combat purposesOf course, you can build much larger assault ships with a significant number of combat drop modules and take them in close to the planet, or you may decide on a carrier type vessel that can launch the assault shuttles or dropships. That carrier could have its own troop transport bays for long journeys, or it might rely on larger, commercial vessels to carry the troops and send its own drop ships to pick them up. There are a lot of possibilities.
Because of these changes, it will no longer to possible to simply switch a ground unit instantly between ships and population using the dropdowns on the Ship and Population windows. The ships will have to be given orders to load/unload in the same way as moving factories or mines, which is more realistic. For convenience though it will still be possible to instantly move ground units between populations on the same planet or between pops and PDCs, as along as the PDC is not under attack.
Loading ground units from Bays on one ship to Combat Drop Modules on another can be done in space, which is necessary if smaller drop ships were going to load troops from bays on large troop transports before attempting a planetary assault. This is done in exactly the same way as picking up from populations except you get a list of divisions to choose from in a friendly fleet. It will still take several hours or days. In a similar way, you can also load troops from bays into drop modules within the same fleet. When moving troops between ships, you get the benefit of the cargo handling systems on both ships, so the transfers can be done fairly quickly. This is especially important when loading smaller drop ships or assault shuttles as they may not have any cargo handling facilities and therefore will rely on the cargo handling facilities of the vessel from which they are loading their troops. Because of this you could carry assault shuttles or drop ships on a carrier and then send them load troops from a large transport, using the transport's cargo handling system to speed the loading.
It was recently requested on the suggestions thread to have some way of loading multiple ground units quickly. I originally considered an order to load a number of the same type of unit but as there is a new divisional and brigade formation structure I decided to take a different approach. When you select the pick up ground unit order, an extra checkbox appears entitled "Load Entire Formation if HQ Selected". If you click this checkbox and load an HQ unit, all sub-units will also be loaded if there is space available. For example, assume you had a divisional HQ, which had two attached brigade HQs, each of which had 3 attached battalions. If you chose to load one of the Brigade HQs with this option selected, the three attached battalions would be loaded (assuming enough space in the fleet). If you chose to load one the Divisional HQs with this option selected, both attached Brigade HQs and all six battalions would be loaded (again, assuming enough space in the fleet). This should make loading large numbers of ground units much easier. When loading or unloading multiple ground units within a fleet, the total (un)loading time is the longest taken for any one ground unit - it is not an aggregate of all the loading times.
Because of the potential need for ships to carry a single assault shuttle in order to deploy an embarked Marine company quickly, I have doubled the size of the Hangar Deck so it can carry a ship of 1000 tons (size 21, Cost 100) and I have added a new Boat Bay (size 6, Cost 30), capable of holding up to 250 tons. These can be mixed on a ship but the hangar deck is more efficient in terms of size and cost. The boat bay costs 1000 RP to develop and is now the pre-requisite for the hangar deck (reduced from 5000 RP to 4000 RP).
Boarding Combat
This replaces the existing combat vs PDCs and adds the ability to board disabled or slow-moving ships. A new "Attempt Boarding Action" order has been added which can be used against sensor contacts. You select the ground units involved just as if you were making a combat drop. At the moment you can only board ships and PDCs. I will probably add shipyards in the future once I figure out how to have defensive forces for that situation. When the fleet intercepts the target, a boarding attempt is carried out. Actually docking with a target that is evading is virtually impossible so the assault involves using a combat drop module to fire the troopers at the enemy ship. They land on the hull, lock themselves in place and either enter through holes in the armour or blast their way in.
Trying to board a ship moving at several hundred or several thousand kilometers per second in this manner is still incredibly risky. Because of the speeds involved, the intercepting vessel must have a huge speed advantage to make the boarding attempt without suffering heavy casualties among the boarders. The cause of those casualties will vary but could include missing the target and ending up within the exhaust plume, impacting the hull at too high a speed, missing entirely and being lost in space, etc. The percentage of casualties from the boarding attempt is equal to 20xD10, giving a range from 20-200%. However, the amount of D10 rolled is reduced by Interception Speed / Target Speed. For example, if the interception speed is 6000 km/s and the target is moving at 1000 km/s, the number of D10 is reduced by 6. Therefore, if the intercepting ship is at least twenty times faster than the target ship, the attempt is automatically successful and no casualties are suffered during the boarding. Because of the risks involved, in most cases before a boarding attempt can be made the target ship will have to be slowed down or disabled.
Once the boarding units land on the enemy ship or PDC, they will attempt to enter. If the armour has already been penetrated by weapon fire, they will enter through the damaged section. If the armour is intact or the damage does not penetrate to the interior they will begin using breaching charges to gain access. One breaching charge will be detonated every thirty seconds and will destroy one point of armour. The boarding units will always chose the point at which the armour is most damaged to place the breaching charge. They should gain access to most ships fairly quickly, especially if the ship has already been slowed down by damage. It may take longer to blast into well-protected PDCs.
Once the boarding units have gained access to the interior alien ship or PDC, combat takes place between the boarders and the crew of the alien ship plus any alien ground units on board. The crew will not be as effective as dedicated combat troops but they are still military personnel with at least some basic combat training and they will be familiar with the layout of their ship. Therefore the combat strength of the crew is equal to 1 defence point for every 100 crew. Below is a comparison of crew vs likely boarding units in terms of attack and defence strength per 500 personnel or a battalion
500 Crew: 0/5
Mobile Infantry Battalion: 5/10
Assault Infantry Battalion 10/5
Heavy Assault Battalion: 12/12
Marine Battalion 20/20 (in boarding combat)
Marine Company 4/4 (in boarding combat)
As this is a high intensity, close quarters engagement it is resolved much more quickly than ground combat. Combat is calculated using the same formula as ground combat with the following exceptions:
1) Combat takes place every five minutes after movement and combat. Once a unit has successfully boarded a hostile vessel, the Boarding Combat Clock begins counting. Once it reaches 300 seconds or greater, a round of boarding combat is fought and the clock is reduced by 300.
2) Low readiness units on both sides cannot avoid combat
3) The boarders cannot retreat so they must keep attacking until they capture the ship, die trying or surrender.
4) As a result of the boarding combat, collateral damage may be inflicted to the ship itself. If this is severe enough, or causes secondary explosions, it is possible the ship might blow up in the midst of the fight.
5) If all the defending units and crew are eliminated, the ship is captured.
Pretty much of the above is coded and working although I still need to carry out more tests. I may also add some type of close quarters defence system to attack troops on the outside of a ship or PDC that are trying to get in and I might also add some form of security detachment for ships. This would be equal to about a platoon of Marines but they would exist as a ship system rather than an independent unit. I'll post any further changes to this thread. I hope the changes already described will make the ground element of Aurora a lot more interesting and add some extra flavour.
Steve
