C# Ground Combat

[Deutschbag]

Gotcha, okay. When we do eventually know the formatting of the file for importing ground formations I plan to make an application to allow planning of formations out of game for import into game Might not be super useful since... well, the game is there, but it'll be a fun project at least.

[Hazard]

It'll mostly be useful by letting you move around the in game technology costs when developing your formations. You do need to research the units you intend to use, and that application will let you take a look at how large and costly a formation might end up being.

It'll be even better if you make that application capable of responding to technology levels. Armour technology directly influences the unit's protection values and the highest of the weapon technologies directly influences the unit's attack values after all.

[Ektor]

If you make a very heavy PWL infantry formation, won't it be a highly effective bullet sponge? I'm not good at maths so I can't run a simulation like some other people have here, but would the cost in BP from losing PWLs be less than actually putting a more expensive formation on the line? The heavy formation would mean it's likely to be attacked first.

[Steve Walmsley]

If you make a very heavy PWL infantry formation, won't it be a highly effective bullet sponge? I'm not good at maths so I can't run a simulation like some other people have here, but would the cost in BP from losing PWLs be less than actually putting a more expensive formation on the line? The heavy formation would mean it's likely to be attacked first.

Yes, it will be a good bullet sponge but it will only cause minimal damage in return.

[Deutschbag]

It'll mostly be useful by letting you move around the in game technology costs when developing your formations. You do need to research the units you intend to use, and that application will let you take a look at how large and costly a formation might end up being.

It'll be even better if you make that application capable of responding to technology levels. Armour technology directly influences the unit's protection values and the highest of the weapon technologies directly influences the unit's attack values after all.

That's the intent, yes. I plan to integrate being able to select individual technology levels to see how things scale at different levels of technological sophistication Will have to wait til it's released, though, to fully dig into the numbers.

[Hazard]

If you make a very heavy PWL infantry formation, won't it be a highly effective bullet sponge? I'm not good at maths so I can't run a simulation like some other people have here, but would the cost in BP from losing PWLs be less than actually putting a more expensive formation on the line? The heavy formation would mean it's likely to be attacked first.

Yes.

You kind of don't want to use PWL infantry in a frontline combat role though. As Steve notes, they will do only minimal damage. The main uses of PWL infantry will be garrison duties in rear areas of the empire, beating down substantially lower teched natives and as security for support formations, which is the bullet sponge role.

For the frontline combat role it's generally more cost and transport capacity effective to make use of PW equipped infantry.

[Alsadius]

PWL backed by artillery and/or ground attack fighters could work pretty well.

The downside is that those are weapon systems that get punished badly by the collateral damage rules, so you'll be turning the planet you fight over into a parking lot.

[Hazard]

PW backed by artillery and/or ground attack fighters would work even better, and lean much less heavily on the collateral damage heavy support formations to do damage.

Now, artillery formations with PWL security attached to absorb bullets for the moments the enemy breaks through the lines or performs counter battery? That does work.

[Alsadius]

PW backed by artillery and/or ground attack fighters would work even better, and lean much less heavily on the collateral damage heavy support formations to do damage.

Depends on how much value you place on bullet sponging, and how much you place on organic damage being done by the front-line forces.

Roleplaying an especially brutal empire, PWL+arty sounds like a very fitting combination.

[mtm84]

PWL+arty sounds like a very fitting combination.

Pretty much how I played HoI 3 USSR.

[Jorgen_CAB]

From a pure math perspective then regular cheap infantry are industry to military power the most efficient military force you can build with some back up hard hitting things. So, as long as you intend to have them on the planet in question or you have time to ship them out to colonies in many trips then for that purpose you should build them. Call it garrison forces or meat for the grinder or what ever...

As the game does not care about the morality of casualties in any way and there is no manpower issues (only industrial power counts) you will have to role-play any form of restrictions around these facts. There are no mechanics that means that a guy with a gun is worth as much as a tank or even more, such as with suppression or policing for example. In the mechanic there are not a huge number of interaction between the type of mixed forces you actually have, such as the sum of the whole is larger than each individual part, every part sort of fights on its own merit only.
If you play more of a Star-Trek oriented faction which highly value life and the prosperity of the people then giving the people doing the fighting anything less then the best possible equipment to survive would not be an option unless you are forced to another solution. If you are the evil god emperor like in the Warhammer universe you can throw life away in any fashion you like...

The game mechanic will just be the mechanics around the rules you set. As long as there are no other consideration but industry there will be hard core facts at what is the best solution to any given problem. Even for assaulting a world you probably can come up with the most efficient mix of expensive troops depending on the cost of the ships in return for the space they provide to drop the troops on a hostile planet in significant enough numbers to matter.

I bet someone will do the math once the game is out...  

I'm just not going to care what is the most optimum way to do it as long as it is not completely broken as I will add things like philosophy, culture, doctrines, experience and politics into the reasons a military look like it does, just like I do with military ship designs. I don't run my campaigns with the people living in it have any sort of foreknowledge of anything and certainly not about game mechanics. 

[Hazard]

Note that infantry backed up by heavy weapons has historically pretty much always been the most industrially efficient military force, with few exceptions. And in those cases a counter was devised that resulted in the supremacy returning to properly equipped and supported infantry forces.

This did not change with the invention of the gun; if anything, as the gun became more effective the infantry became more potent. Even today infantry has a key role in warfare, and one of their tasks has been one that has occurred throughout history, fixing the enemy in place so that harder hitting weapons can be used.


That said, there are a number of ways in which infantry actually is definitely superior to more industrial power demanding units. For one, the fortification mechanics greatly favours infantry forces, to the point that a properly fortified infantry unit is very difficult to dig out of mountainous or overgrown terrain. And the gods help you if the terrain is both. Two, infantry does in fact do a better job policing a planet then tanks do; enforcement here is dependent on numbers, not the biggest guns, so an infantry unit with the greater numbers would be much more capable in this job and quite possibly cheaper than a force of tanks with the same job. Three, infantry just lets you stack a lot more weapons on the same load of tonnage. They're not as sturdy as a vehicle, but you can generally expect to stack at least 2 weapons for the same amount of tonnage as with even light vehicles.

They also have a few drawbacks. For one, infantry can't carry Medium or Heavy weapons. For another, when hit they are extremely fragile. And third, CAP and HCAP weapons will mow infantry forces down in a way no weapon system can mow down vehicles or static units. Their volume of fire is obscene compared to other weapons.

Raw manpower isn't an issue in Aurora because in Aurora the ability to equip and ship soldiers is insignificant compared to the total population of a given empire. A major ground side engagement would be at most a few divisions slugging it out with maybe a few hundred thousand soldiers total, when the nations involved both number in the billions in population. At that point, even if everybody dies over the course of the fighting it's a rounding error compared to the total number of people that die every year. Trained manpower is an issue however, because there's only so many academies and GFTFs you've got running that can get you the personnel you need.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree that the numbers in Aurora is insignificant in contrast to the cost of training and equipping even the cheapest soldier in comparison to the economy as a whole. So even if you spam the cheapest infantry in the game by the time you equipped enough of the (like several million of not hundreds of millions that is required for a total war army) then that economy is ruined.

I guess that even the cheapest soldier still is rather well equipped when you look at the cost needed to equip them seen to the economy at large.

That of course still does not answer to philosophical question of casualties and keeping them to a minimum in some societies, that still have to be role-played in my opinion.

If I would anything to be added to the game eventually would be formations of mixed types having certain ability or impact which make the whole stronger then the individual part becasue that is how things work in real life. A tank formation are usually way more powerful when you mix them with a functional infantry, artillery and air-force... as a lone formation they are not all that useful.

[misanthropope]

Now, artillery formations with PWL security attached to absorb bullets for the moments the enemy breaks through the lines or performs counter battery? That does work.

in fact, it doesn't.  add five thousand tons of meat shield to your 5000 ton arty formation, sure they sink half the hits the formation takes, but they also make the formation twice the target size.  infy in your support and rear formations are protecting your _front line_ formations to the extent they are doing anything, which isn't much. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Now, artillery formations with PWL security attached to absorb bullets for the moments the enemy breaks through the lines or performs counter battery? That does work.

in fact, it doesn't.  add five thousand tons of meat shield to your 5000 ton arty formation, sure they sink half the hits the formation takes, but they also make the formation twice the target size.  infy in your support and rear formations are protecting your _front line_ formations to the extent they are doing anything, which isn't much.

This is why I would like to have mixed formations in the ground combat rules. You should be able to mix a garrison with your artillery which make a relatively small garrison size able to protec a larger artillery size as one example. A good example on how the sum of the part are greater than the whole.

Or that you can use light vehicles and infantry in the same formation where the infantry can protect the light vehicle against tanks and the vehicle against enemy infantry. This would be your mechanised assault force.