That's... rather much. It can work out that such a level of supply is necessary though, when a planet is very defensible. 130 rounds of combat works out to about a month of fighting (IIRC 1 round is 6 hours, if it's 3 hours is about 2.5 weeks of fighting), and I can see very well defended planets take that long to get the defenders ground down unless you go in with absolutely overwhelming force, and at that point you are basically committing a vast chunk of your GFTF production for an extended period of time.
Oh, it's insane. I thought I needed that to get 13 rounds of resupply, which felt reasonable. But 130 is bonkers. I'd probably cut about 80-90% of that supply force in favour of either construction vehicles/STO forces (if I expect the units to stay as garrison after conquering a planet), or just reducing the total size of the force. Supply was over 20% of the all-in cost of that division, so it's a meaningful difference.
True, but at the same time the relative cheapness of stationing and keeping troops in secured space is not to be neglected.
(snip)
...you don't have to provide any supply until soldiers are in combat.
Remember that ground forces require upkeep. The Wealth cost to keep forces even when they're not fighting represents these costs. It's not a BP cost, but it'll still be meaningful.
While true, it's relevant to note that bombardment and counterbattery fire are just as random as normal ground unit fire, only fighters flying Flak Suppression missions directly target a specific type of enemy formation. Because of this, having PWL infantry in the formation is just as effective at soaking bombardment fire and keeping valuable formations safe as they are at soaking fire from enemy breakthrough units.
Tagging relevant forces as combat avoidant just makes the PWL 500% as effective as they would normally be, because you wouldn't define them as combat avoidant, you want them to get shot at in such circumstances.
Remember that avoiding combat also reduces their offensive firepower 80%. So it'll work fine for supply, HQ, and FFD units, but you wouldn't want to use it for artillery, AA, or STO.
Iterative testing would be required here, yes. I would expect that the compounding effect of losing about 1/3rd less units is helpful, because that also means you lose 1/3rd less firepower over time. It's definitely something that will require a bit of thought though, because it also means that you are effectively bringing 1/2 the infantry to the fight on the same production budget. It's one of those 'we could equip everyone with 5 million credits worth of equipment and see them swarmed and torn apart, or we could equip everyone with 500 000 thousand credits worth of equipment and lose half of them and win anyway' cases.
It wouldn't be the first time where the numerically superior side wins on count of being numerically superior and having more guns to shoot, despite the enemy being better protected.
Yup. The more I dig into this system, the more I like it. It's clean, it creates realistic fighting where I want combined arms instead of spamming one god unit, and the tradeoffs are designed
really well. Big props to Steve.
Those AT emplacements do amazing work - each one costs 1.2 BP, and kills 6.75 BP per round. The sum total for the unit is that it'd take 22.85 BP per round of damage, and inflict 95.41 BP worth.
That's a pretty damn good trade.
More like such a formation would be the ground security complement for the STO emplacements. Those HAA units are rather expensive in supplies for an AT weapon, but the question of 'do I deploy them forward and risk them getting shot apart by ground forces early but deter enemy tanks' or 'do I keep them in the back so they can bully enemy airpower but get flattened in an instant in a breakthrough' is an entirely valid one that I expect will depend at least in part on what sort of enemy forces you are facing. I'd move them forward sooner with an enemy assault force with a large armour component.
Not that expensive - they're comparable to MAV in anti-tank work(3 AP/6 damage/18 supply for HAA, 4 AP/4 damage/16 supply for MAV). They do fire twice a round because of the extra AA phase, and thus use double the supplies, but you'll need to fire the AA from somewhere regardless. The big costs are that it's about twice the size (60 tons vs 32), so you won't want to use AA unless you actually expect enemy air power, and that if you lose the unit you lose both the AV and AA weapons instead of them being broken up.
If you are losing logistics to enemy fire from non-breakthrough units it might be worth reconsidering forward deploying logistics units. Due to how logistics work they are always at risk, and the highest logistics unit in the planetary OOB gets drained first anyway. It might work out better to have a small(ish) vehicular logistics unit attached to the force but separate and kept in the rear, where it's not as likely to get flattened during the fighting unless the battle is lost anyway.
Because in any fight where that garrison force is part of a higher command with vehicle supply units on hand, supply integrated in any formation that is likely to take fire is going to be lost supply. So you wouldn't want to put infantry supply forces forward anyway except when your forces have drained their supply pool and need a top up, which is just a micromanagement hell issue, and you want to keep your logistics vehicles as far back as possible because they are going to supply everything down the chain of command from the HQ they are attached to anyway.
The most efficient use of infantry supply units in a way that doesn't create a micromanagement problem would be to use them to supply to MAA and HAA units away from the frontlines who are likely to be targeted by fighters on Flak Suppression missions, which don't target non-AA unit elements, and nowhere else as no other units would not be fired upon while having a draw on supply.
Yeah, infantry supply for the AA/arty formation behind the front lines sounds like a solid plan to me.
Wrong, unless firing at horizon, orbital targets would require almost vertical elevation of the barrel, the recoil would be directed downwards and on to the soil.
That's far too strong a claim to simply say "wrong". A STO weapon can presumably fire at an entire hemisphere over the horizon. Most of that isn't straight up.
That said, you don't need to be static to open fire at an angle with heavy ordinance. Artillery exists. A 10cm railgun is 150 tons - that's well within the realm where real-world mobile artillery has been built.
The biggest gun ever built was 1350 tons = 27 HS, and that was (barely) mobile. It could also fire at any angle from flat to 48 degrees up, which is to say all the angles where recoil mostly
isn't straight down.
I think "STO can only be static" is a reasonable game rule, not least because it means that the installations can't be too insanely fortified. If you could put them on UHVs, the natural way to defend would probably just be to spam all-in-one Ogres, and that would be both boring and stupid. But the better argument here is gameplay, not realism, IMO.
