Replacing PDCs

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Hi Steve!
While I like all the new additions, complex Ground Combat is not the feature I really want to get involved into.
Will we have some tools to make it easier for guys like me, who wants to build big space ships only?

Yes, it shouldn't be too hard to auto-design some ground formations, as I will need to do that for NPRs anyway. It will be a lot easier than writing the automated design for ship classes

[vorpal+5]

Have you considered the possibility of ship templates made by players, as a library (x in fact, as they would have tags and weight associated to tags perhaps). Said differently, there are things that can be delegated to the community.
This can be a complement and not a replacement to the AI code for ship design.

[sloanjh]

A formation without a commander will not receive benefits from higher echelon commanders.

Does this mean you've moved away from the concept of "named" commanders being exceptional individuals swimming in a sea of unnamed commanders, and that a unit without a commander represents on commanded by an unnamed commander?  Or does it mean that unnamed commanders are so incompetent that they can't benefit from the skills of the higher echelon commanders?

John

[Whitecold]

I still see a lot of problems with the approach of drop bays being damaged on an abandon drop. For one I would like to be able to swap in dropships from another ship in.
Also, how does it work with picking up drop ships? Do bays get restored then?
I want to avoid at all costs having ships sit in orbit wait on drop craft unloading, so I'd like to first abandon drop one wave, with the second wave coming in picking up the drop ships of the first wave as they send in their own.

[Bremen]

Have you considered the possibility of ship templates made by players, as a library (x in fact, as they would have tags and weight associated to tags perhaps). Said differently, there are things that can be delegated to the community.
This can be a complement and not a replacement to the AI code for ship design.

I'm definitely in favor of this; even without access to the actual AI programming, if Steve is willing to open up the template format I'm sure he'd get loads of submissions. We could even run design competitions.

I hope he'll consider it, maybe for one of the later releases.

[Hazard]

I still see a lot of problems with the approach of drop bays being damaged on an abandon drop. For one I would like to be able to swap in dropships from another ship in.
Also, how does it work with picking up drop ships? Do bays get restored then?
I want to avoid at all costs having ships sit in orbit wait on drop craft unloading, so I'd like to first abandon drop one wave, with the second wave coming in picking up the drop ships of the first wave as they send in their own.

Too inconvenient to program. You'd have to program actual dropships instead of an abstraction as well as determine how well they do in a ground combat engagement. Steve wants to avoid that mess, hence the abstract 'drop' mechanics and the presumption that ground forces do not defend dropships after the drop since they are expected to either see those things leave or won't be picked up any time soon and will abandon them for better positions.

[QuakeIV]

I'm personally not sure that what he is doing is neccesarily cleaner than just letting people design actual drop ship vessels.

It seems like the only one who should proclaim an idea to be prohibitive should be steve himself, rather than people trying to interpret what he has said so far.
 Worst case scenario, Steve ignores the idea because he thinks its not a good idea and doesn't feel like replying at the time.  May as well let people discuss it in the mean time.

I personally kinda think it would be cleaner if you had ships that can enter atmo like fighters, that have short term troop bays in them.  Maybe disregard the idea of a 'drop pod bay' entirely and just have that module be something for mobile troop transport ships.  Then you just carry those ships in hangers on ships that have long term troop storage bays in them.

[El Pip]

I personally kinda think it would be cleaner if you had ships that can enter atmo like fighters, that have short term troop bays in them.  Maybe disregard the idea of a 'drop pod bay' entirely and just have that module be something for mobile troop transport ships.  Then you just carry those ships in hangers on ships that have long term troop storage bays in them.

As I understand it the aim is for the mothership to be at risk while it is launching the drop pods. If the drop pods were independent then the logical decision is to give them a bit of extra fuel on so the mother ship could stand off from the planet and launch in safety.

[Whitecold]

Too inconvenient to program. You'd have to program actual dropships instead of an abstraction as well as determine how well they do in a ground combat engagement. Steve wants to avoid that mess, hence the abstract 'drop' mechanics and the presumption that ground forces do not defend dropships after the drop since they are expected to either see those things leave or won't be picked up any time soon and will abandon them for better positions.

I don't understand why this should be any more complicated to implement than other solutions. It is a design consideration.
I know that Steve wants to keep it simple, but my feel is that 'abandon drop' will be used exclusively against defended targets. If this always damages the bay, and you can only fix it at a yard, there is no point in building non-drop bay equipped transports ever, making it pointless to even implement those. Abandon or wait feels like inflexible handling of drops when you need them to just wait five more minutes somewhere to improve your schedule.

Also, the combat drop is one of the central elements of any assault, and we are getting all the fancy options of non-abstract combat troops. Having abstract drop ships still does not feel adequate to me. Some types of infantry and vehicles may drop directly from orbit, some flying vehicles may be able to achieve orbit again under their own power.

As I understand it the aim is for the mothership to be at risk while it is launching the drop pods. If the drop pods were independent then the logical decision is to give them a bit of extra fuel on so the mother ship could stand off from the planet and launch in safety.

Which IMHO would be the sensible thing to do in the first place. And there again Aurora usually gives you the building blocks to build what fits your doctrine and gives you options to try out. Forcing the mothership into danger feels still just wrong to me.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I don't understand why this should be any more complicated to implement than other solutions. It is a design consideration.
I know that Steve wants to keep it simple, but my feel is that 'abandon drop' will be used exclusively against defended targets. If this always damages the bay, and you can only fix it at a yard, there is no point in building non-drop bay equipped transports ever, making it pointless to even implement those. Abandon or wait feels like inflexible handling of drops when you need them to just wait five more minutes somewhere to improve your schedule.

That rather depends on whether drop bays are military or not

[Whitecold]

That rather depends on whether drop bays are military or not

All right, if you need ships to transport troops between your own colonies, but for any kind of assault they will be useless. And once you built a decent assault transport fleet, they will likely fulfill all your internal deployment needs.
I want those civ class troop transports be around, and I want them to transship into proper assault transports on location, but I just can't see how this should work if all your assault transport are one-time use only, because they a) have destroyed troop bays or b) are expanding clouds of debris.

[swarm_sadist]

One request I have for ground forces is that we be able to transport ground troops and their equipment on colony ships and cargo ships.

More specifically, be able to split a ground formation into it's personnel and equipment separately, load them onto colony ships and cargo ships respectively, then unload and combine them at their destination.

This would allow much larger formations to be transported between friendly staging areas, but not be deploy-able directly into combat. Like using a container ship to transport tanks and equipment, and sending the troops on a cruise ship.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Does this mean you've moved away from the concept of "named" commanders being exceptional individuals swimming in a sea of unnamed commanders, and that a unit without a commander represents on commanded by an unnamed commander?  Or does it mean that unnamed commanders are so incompetent that they can't benefit from the skills of the higher echelon commanders?

John

The gameplay reason is to avoid having very large hierarchies filled with formations with no commanders and relatively junior officers at the top. By removing bonuses from formations without specified commanders, players have to create realistic command hierarchies, comprising between size and availability of commanders. It also avoids a potential exploit of creating a lot of very small formations to generate benefits from multi-level hierarchies, because you would need too many commanders to accomplish that (although you can still do it on a smaller scale for specialist units). On the other hand, creating a few very large formations making transport more difficult, reduces flexibility and does not allow for unused commanders to gain experience. In-game, that does translate to a situation where the assumption is that 'non-named' commanders are not skilled enough to benefit from their superiors.

BTW I've given a little more thought to headquarters components and realised that I don't even have to name them as brigade, division, etc. I'll have generic component names with a variety of command ratings and the player can name the Ground Unit Class that uses that component. That will allow players to decide for themselves how large they want their battalions or brigades (or regiments, legions, etc.).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I still see a lot of problems with the approach of drop bays being damaged on an abandon drop. For one I would like to be able to swap in dropships from another ship in.
Also, how does it work with picking up drop ships? Do bays get restored then?
I want to avoid at all costs having ships sit in orbit wait on drop craft unloading, so I'd like to first abandon drop one wave, with the second wave coming in picking up the drop ships of the first wave as they send in their own.

I've decided to abstract the drop pods, so tracking pods on the ground or from one ship to another won't be possible. The ships could be different sizes so I would have to track the total drop pods tonnage and account for any damage from opposing ground forces. Also, there wouldn't be any point in having the 'Wait and Recover' order because it would always better to 'Abandon' and collect later. Finally, landing in multiple waves wouldn't be a good idea anyway, given the potential for STO units. It would be more effective to send all ships in together and divide hostile fire.

Once you abandon, the pods are lost and can't be subsequently recovered.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I know that Steve wants to keep it simple, but my feel is that 'abandon drop' will be used exclusively against defended targets. If this always damages the bay, and you can only fix it at a yard, there is no point in building non-drop bay equipped transports ever, making it pointless to even implement those.

Non-drop bays are commercial, while the other bays are military.