Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Jorgen_CAB on November 14, 2019, 06:46:04 PM
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I have looked at Steves AAR and the mechanic for ground combat and for the most part it seem to play out very nice...
There are two things that I do find a bit perplexing and strange.
The first is the easiest one and that is how bloody and fast paced it can become, especially when we talk about ground combat that might involve an entire planetary surface. The larger the forces the longer a war should take, so some mechanic that make the forces less killy the larger they are should be a feature somehow.
I also would like to see something that reign in the square law of destroying something, that is often not how things actually work out in reality. Resistance tend to be like a rubber band and be more and more resistant as time goes on until it eventually just break and you would not really know when that happen. Right now it is for the most part easy to figure out who is winning and how long it will take after a few rounds as the winner just kill more and more enemy troops for everyone he himself looses.
The other issue I have after some deliberation is the front line mechanic... it sort of make little sense that two entrenched units fight each other, they would have to leave their entrenchment to do that in the first place.
I would instead only allow the offensive front to be the ones that can actually inflict casualties on the enemy while the defensive line still have to randomly target an enemy unit in either defensive or offensive line. If a unit in the defensive line target a unit in the enemy defensive (or support, echelon) line they do no damage. Only support weapon in the defensive line can do damage to the enemy defensive line and artillery in the support line etc. So you would still see attrition over time on both sides, more like skirmishing and bombardment of enemy positions.
The offensive line should also increase its size so attacks are a bit more likely to hit them and not the defensive line, perhaps 150% of their original size or something.
The current system can become a bit weird as an attack pull back all their forces in support line the defender can send in their armoured reserve with no retaliation what so ever as none of those unit in support can shoot back in the 8 hour ground combat round that follows.
It also feels a bit weird that you can entrench all your forces and THEN attack with full entrenchment values. Two entrenched enemies should just be staring at each other and lobbing artillery rounds and making air-strikes etc...
My suggestion above of changing the front line mechanic a bit would also to some degree solve the overly brutal nature of the games ground combat. Also, in many real wars between two relatively equally qualitative standard you would still loose about as much manpower as the enemy even if you had roughly a 3:1 advantage in strength. The way the game is setup you would probably not reach that (unless you attack with no entrenchment?!?), but I might be wrong though.
Another thing I also would like to see is that population play a role in ground combat... we should be able to quickly form very light militia formations from large population planets. They might not be able to destroy a qualitative opponent but they would drag out the war for a long time and make it very costly. Militia formations should be some sort of readiness level which cost you some wealth in maintenance with a minimal level that cost nothing but only give you a very small number. But in a world with 10.000.000 people you should be able to get a considerable number of militia forces even at minimal level. Once the militia have fought and hostilities are over it would replenish its number after a while, not immediately. Raising the militia level also should take time, so you could not do it just before an invasion. The militia should basically be like half strength of the lowest normal troops, but they are many so killing them with tanks would take a very long time.
Some of my quick reflections of what I have seen so far...
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The speed I'm okay with. I mean, if I have ten divisions and the enemy has ten divisions, I don't see any reason it shouldn't work out the same as ten one division on one division fights. It's not like chokepoints are likely to be an issue on a planetary scale with both sides having the tech for rapid transport.
I do kind of like the idea that if boths sides are on defensive there should only be artillery fire (including FFD supported orbital bombardment), personally, and I agree that "fortify in place and then attack" is an odd behavior but seemingly incentivized by the current system. Maybe this is countered by the fact that having no units on defense means you can easily be overrun by attackers, I'm not 100% on how the ground combat works in that scenario, but if so it would seem tricky if the AI doesn't know how to make use of that.
I think the idea of having defensive units randomly target and inflict no damage if they "pick" a defensive one is massively exploitable, though (for instance, having 1 attacker and a thousand 1 man formations on defensive). Rather I would say that all defensive formations should only target attacking formations, while attacking formations will target both defensive and attacking formations - it still works out fine.
That said it may be a little late in this version cycle to make that change, even if I like the idea. Once C# comes out I'm sure we'll all have a better idea of the ground combat and can make suggestions from there.
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The speed I'm okay with. I mean, if I have ten divisions and the enemy has ten divisions, I don't see any reason it shouldn't work out the same as ten one division on one division fights. It's not like chokepoints are likely to be an issue on a planetary scale with both sides having the tech for rapid transport.
I do kind of like the idea that if boths sides are on defensive there should only be artillery fire (including FFD supported orbital bombardment), personally, and I agree that "fortify in place and then attack" is an odd behavior but seemingly incentivized by the current system. Maybe this is countered by the fact that having no units on defense means you can easily be overrun by attackers, I'm not 100% on how the ground combat works in that scenario, but if so it would seem tricky if the AI doesn't know how to make use of that.
I think the idea of having defensive units randomly target and inflict no damage if they "pick" a defensive one is massively exploitable, though (for instance, having 1 attacker and a thousand 1 man formations on defensive). Rather I would say that all defensive formations should only target attacking formations, while attacking formations will target both defensive and attacking formations - it still works out fine.
That said it may be a little late in this version cycle to make that change, even if I like the idea. Once C# comes out I'm sure we'll all have a better idea of the ground combat and can make suggestions from there.
In terms of scale what I meant was that an engagement between 2000 or 200.000 on each side should be vastly different in time scale, right now it scale rather linear while in reality it would not as the larger an operation is the more complicated it is and organisation and logistics take more time. There should just be a reduction on the total allowable width that actually fight the larger the battle is during each 8 hour cycle or there should be a % chance that no combat occur in that phase might be easier to implement as the armies scale in size.
It also is not realistic that 10:1 odds means all 10 divisions get to fire at the same time in reality... a 10:1 odds in reality will never mean 10:1 odds in the field... there are only so many soldiers and material you can throw in... even in terms of artillery to some degree at one point in time.
The exploit you mention does not happen as each of you targets is a certain width, the same way that damage in ship components work. If you kill that one soldier you randomise a new one until all your hits hit something. I'm sure this is how it currently work, otherwise you could always exploit this anyway.
The effect of scaling would then mean if you dump 1.000.000 soldier to beat 2000 soldiers (width should be the factor) then there would be a much higher chance several 8 hour ticks go by with nothing
happening representing the extremely large forces organising rather than attacking. It would be an abstraction to the fact that such large forces are involved. If you instead drop 20.000 men it is a much faster combat and the chance that an 8 hour cycle is skipped is much lower. It has to scale none linear to work. So a larger force is much more likely to skip a turn than a smaller one. The factor should then be both forces added together or something. It would be an abstracted mechanic to show the lulls and organisational hassle of managing really large armies.
This would also make smaller more powerful armies way more effective time-wise than a more numerous unwieldy army which is realistic. The end result would still be the same, just the time it takes would differ in this instance.
In addition there should also be a limit of how much width could ever target another width, it would probably be realistic to restrict it at someplace around 10 times the numbers.
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In terms of scale what I meant was that an engagement between 2000 or 200.000 on each side should be vastly different in time scale, right now it scale rather linear while in reality it would not as the larger an operation is the more complicated it is and organisation and logistics take more time. There should just be a reduction on the total allowable width that actually fight the larger the battle is during each 8 hour cycle or there should be a % chance that no combat occur in that phase might be easier to implement as the armies scale in size.
It also is not realistic that 10:1 odds means all 10 divisions get to fire at the same time in reality... a 10:1 odds in reality will never mean 10:1 odds in the field... there are only so many soldiers and material you can throw in... even in terms of artillery to some degree at one point in time.
You're thinking of it like a war, though, and I'm thinking of it like a battle. A battle with 10,000 men over 100 miles wouldn't be 100 times as long as a battle with 100 men over 1 mile, it would be pretty similar. You might wait weeks before launching a major attack, but once you do it will probably be over quickly one way or another. Since we're talking about planetary scales with armies of probably 10s of thousands, maybe slightly more, I don't think width or maneuver is likely to be a big issue issue.
Making it so 10 divisions can't simultaneously engage one division is more of a balance consideration, and I have no strong feelings on it. Again, I'd say it might be best to wait until we've played the first version before actually worrying about balance.
The exploit you mention does not happen as each of you targets is a certain width, the same way that damage in ship components work. If you kill that one soldier you randomise a new one until all your hits hit something. I'm sure this is how it currently work, otherwise you could always exploit this anyway.
Except you don't kill the soldier, because your suggestion was if a formation on defense picks a target that's also on the defense it deals no damage:
If a unit in the defensive line target a unit in the enemy defensive (or support, echelon) line they do no damage.
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In terms of scale what I meant was that an engagement between 2000 or 200.000 on each side should be vastly different in time scale, right now it scale rather linear while in reality it would not as the larger an operation is the more complicated it is and organisation and logistics take more time. There should just be a reduction on the total allowable width that actually fight the larger the battle is during each 8 hour cycle or there should be a % chance that no combat occur in that phase might be easier to implement as the armies scale in size.
It also is not realistic that 10:1 odds means all 10 divisions get to fire at the same time in reality... a 10:1 odds in reality will never mean 10:1 odds in the field... there are only so many soldiers and material you can throw in... even in terms of artillery to some degree at one point in time.
You're thinking of it like a war, though, and I'm thinking of it like a battle. A battle with 10,000 men over 100 miles wouldn't be 100 times as long as a battle with 100 men over 1 mile, it would be pretty similar. You might wait weeks before launching a major attack, but once you do it will probably be over quickly one way or another. Since we're talking about planetary scales with armies of probably 10s of thousands, maybe slightly more, I don't think width or maneuver is likely to be a big issue issue.
Making it so 10 divisions can't simultaneously engage one division is more of a balance consideration, and I have no strong feelings on it. Again, I'd say it might be best to wait until we've played the first version before actually worrying about balance.
The exploit you mention does not happen as each of you targets is a certain width, the same way that damage in ship components work. If you kill that one soldier you randomise a new one until all your hits hit something. I'm sure this is how it currently work, otherwise you could always exploit this anyway.
Except you don't kill the soldier, because your suggestion was if a formation on defense picks a target that's also on the defense it deals no damage:
If a unit in the defensive line target a unit in the enemy defensive (or support, echelon) line they do no damage.
On the picking target thing you are somewhat right... the solution is then that you first weight the likelihood that you either pick a defensive or offensive part of the line and THEN you randomise where you hit.
So if the enemy has 30% of his line in the offensive front it would mean that each of your defensive units randomly pick that force to fire at in 30% of the time and 70% of the time they do nothing but fire there artillery and mortars at a defensive front line unit or nothing at all if they happen to pick the support or echelon line as that is how it currently work.
I also agree that we need to wait and see... but I think I have a good grasp of how the mechanics work over all.
I also agree there is a difference between a battle and a war, the game should simulate both... that is why I suggest that really large conflicts take MUCH longer as an abstraction mechanic and that there is a limit on engagement possibilities.
I also find it very strange that same level of technology would not make it still hard to find and engage each other, there are things like disrupting sensors and stuff like that to hide ones movement etc. Life is never really so black and white... ;)
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On the picking target thing you are somewhat right... the solution is then that you first weight the likelihood that you either pick a defensive or offensive part of the line and THEN you randomise where you hit.
So if the enemy has 30% of his line in the offensive front it would mean that each of your defensive units randomly pick that force to fire at in 30% of the time and 70% of the time they do nothing but fire there artillery and mortars at a defensive front line unit or nothing at all if they happen to pick the support or echelon line as that is how it currently work.
It's still easily exploitable; you could fill a defensive line with cheap units never meant for combat while your actual combat units are on offensive, and thus the defender would hardly ever get a shot off. It also runs the opposite of your suggestion about penalizing ten units attacking one, because it would mean one defending formation against many attackers would spend most of its time being pounded while unable to fire back.
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The mention of "battles" and "war" sparked an idea. They really should be split up. Even an outnumbered defender can win a battle or gain local numerical superiority through superior mobility or strategy.
Instead of each side just blasting the other, all offensives are done in "battles". There may be 1 or more battles each ground combat tick with larger forces likely to have more battles but with diminishing returns. It would basically work as follows:
* All units on both sides start in the Reserve. Units move from Reserve to Battle and back to Reserve once the battle concludes.
* All offensive (in reserve, good health and in the front line) units are put in a randomized list. That is a single list including units from BOTH sides.
* Looping through the list from the top, a check is performed to see if each unit attempts to start a battle. This check is a, say, 20% chance modified by commander stats (perhaps something called "aggression"?) and the number of ongoing battles. If the check is passed, a potential battle is created for this unit.
* The unit picks a target using the current rules.
* Both sides now randomly assign reinforcements from the list of all Reserve units. Every unit has a chance to be assigned to this battle related to how many reinforcements have already been assigned by this side on this battle line (front line or support line). This is all the units that could potentially be involved in this battle.
* Once all forces have been assigned, the attacking commander makes a final Balance-Of-Forces comparison on the relative strengths of the two sides of the battle. If it is sufficiently in his favour (again, perhaps modified by aggression or something) he pulls the trigger and the battle commences. If he feels the odds are against him, the attack is cancelled and all units are returned to the Reserve.
* When battle is joined, it works exactly like combat works at the moment, except that no other units except those in the battle can be targetted.
* At the end of a ground combat tick, the battle usually ends, but if the attackers are doing well (again the attacker makes the Balance-Of-Forces check) it has a chance to continue in the next tick. Badly damaged units have a chance to withdraw from the battle, then the reinforcement step happens again as each side brings new units into the battle.
If one side has such a numerical superiority that it starts running out of targets, then too bad. Those units, while wanting to fight, simply don't have the space to do so. So whether you outnumber your opponent 100x or 10000x has much less of an impact. Army size has a much greater impact on how LONG you can keep fighting and what casualties you can sustain, rather than on how strong you are in a single engagement. You cant instagib a Chaos God by just chucking 42 trillion guardsmen at it. It would take a while to chew through them all, but eventually it (likely) would.
It also offers some protection for support units. Even if they get targeted the first time, frontline units have a chance to rush in and defend it via the reinforcement mechanic.
This also enables further mechanics like allowing individual battles to have different terrain modifiers depending on what terrain is available on the planet and even allow fighting over objectives down the line.
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The mention of "battles" and "war" sparked an idea. They really should be split up. Even an outnumbered defender can win a battle or gain local numerical superiority through superior mobility or strategy.
Instead of each side just blasting the other, all offensives are done in "battles". There may be 1 or more battles each ground combat tick with larger forces likely to have more battles but with diminishing returns. It would basically work as follows:
* All units on both sides start in the Reserve. Units move from Reserve to Battle and back to Reserve once the battle concludes.
* All offensive (in reserve, good health and in the front line) units are put in a randomized list. That is a single list including units from BOTH sides.
* Looping through the list from the top, a check is performed to see if each unit attempts to start a battle. This check is a, say, 20% chance modified by commander stats (perhaps something called "aggression"?) and the number of ongoing battles. If the check is passed, a potential battle is created for this unit.
* The unit picks a target using the current rules.
* Both sides now randomly assign reinforcements from the list of all Reserve units. Every unit has a chance to be assigned to this battle related to how many reinforcements have already been assigned by this side on this battle line (front line or support line). This is all the units that could potentially be involved in this battle.
* Once all forces have been assigned, the attacking commander makes a final Balance-Of-Forces comparison on the relative strengths of the two sides of the battle. If it is sufficiently in his favour (again, perhaps modified by aggression or something) he pulls the trigger and the battle commences. If he feels the odds are against him, the attack is cancelled and all units are returned to the Reserve.
* When battle is joined, it works exactly like combat works at the moment, except that no other units except those in the battle can be targetted.
* At the end of a ground combat tick, the battle usually ends, but if the attackers are doing well (again the attacker makes the Balance-Of-Forces check) it has a chance to continue in the next tick. Badly damaged units have a chance to withdraw from the battle, then the reinforcement step happens again as each side brings new units into the battle.
If one side has such a numerical superiority that it starts running out of targets, then too bad. Those units, while wanting to fight, simply don't have the space to do so. So whether you outnumber your opponent 100x or 10000x has much less of an impact. Army size has a much greater impact on how LONG you can keep fighting and what casualties you can sustain, rather than on how strong you are in a single engagement. You cant instagib a Chaos God by just chucking 42 trillion guardsmen at it. It would take a while to chew through them all, but eventually it (likely) would.
It also offers some protection for support units. Even if they get targeted the first time, frontline units have a chance to rush in and defend it via the reinforcement mechanic.
This also enables further mechanics like allowing individual battles to have different terrain modifiers depending on what terrain is available on the planet and even allow fighting over objectives down the line.
This is roughly what I would like to see in general, it would be way more realistic and also quite fun to see which units was involved in battles and how things went. It would also give a somewhat benefit to qualitative armies that would probably win more but a low quality army could still hold on to a battle field for quite some time. It would also scale better as battles/wars grow in size.
If terrain and structures was abstracted into the battles then we could see infantry trying to stay in built up areas and difficult terrain and tanks formations battling it out on more open ground. If you brought a lot of tanks into a mainly city brawl then those tanks would not be so powerful anymore. You might receive some bonuses for winning the battle on the open but eventually you run out of open space to conquer and most concentrate on the built up areas, without infantry that will be a nightmare.
You might even be able to strategically just give up the fight on open terrain and cling to the cities or mountains or something. Immediately giving up bonuses to the enemy but also saving valuable resources to protecting that allot more easily defended, especially if you are outnumbered and outgunned.
There might also be an option of disbanding your troops to fight a guerrilla war, that is often quite realistic and dangerous in the real world.
I also think there could be some differences on battle space if you are fighting on a small asteroid or on a vast planet surface in hundreds of cities and with billions of people involved.
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On the picking target thing you are somewhat right... the solution is then that you first weight the likelihood that you either pick a defensive or offensive part of the line and THEN you randomise where you hit.
So if the enemy has 30% of his line in the offensive front it would mean that each of your defensive units randomly pick that force to fire at in 30% of the time and 70% of the time they do nothing but fire there artillery and mortars at a defensive front line unit or nothing at all if they happen to pick the support or echelon line as that is how it currently work.
It's still easily exploitable; you could fill a defensive line with cheap units never meant for combat while your actual combat units are on offensive, and thus the defender would hardly ever get a shot off. It also runs the opposite of your suggestion about penalizing ten units attacking one, because it would mean one defending formation against many attackers would spend most of its time being pounded while unable to fire back.
Sure... could still work if you allow a certain amount of defenders to attack the offensive units though, sort of a mobile reserve. Sure it could be solved to satisfaction.
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While I'd like further development in ground combat mechanics, the current system is functional. I'd say let Steve bring C# out first.
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While I'd like further development in ground combat mechanics, the current system is functional. I'd say let Steve bring C# out first.
Yeah. While I like the idea of fights where both sides are on the defensive just exchanging artillery fire (which would also effectively be the difference between a battle and a war, IMHO), I'm happy to wait and see on that. The rest sounds to me like it's complicating the process for no actual gain, though again it may be best to wait and see.
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Some of this stuff that you're proposing isn't actually a problem, or is wholly unnecessary. Because you're still thinking of it in terms of Earth based wars at localised level and not interstellar future war on a planetary level.
So things like:
It also is not realistic that 10:1 odds means all 10 divisions get to fire at the same time in reality... a 10:1 odds in reality will never mean 10:1 odds in the field... there are only so many soldiers and material you can throw in... even in terms of artillery to some degree at one point in time.
is not as important as you think. I used to think the same way and this is of course obviously true for our own military history, because ever human war ever has always been constrained and limited by geography. Even the largest human conflict, the Eastern Front of WW2, was limited and only took place over some minuscule 0.0001% of Earth surface.
Once your sensors are good enough that you can pinpoint 1000 power armoured soldiers on the surface of a planet, you have in essence unlimited real estate to encircle and envelope them in three dimensions with your 10,000 power armoured soldiers. We're not doing tactical or even operational level combat here, purely strategic level, so having those 10,000 guys all be able to fire on the 1000 guys is reasonable and believable.
Even asteroids are generally big enough (when modelled in Aurora) to have room for thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles.
Similarly:
in terms of scale what I meant was that an engagement between 2000 or 200.000 on each side should be vastly different in time scale, right now it scale rather linear while in reality it would not as the larger an operation is the more complicated it is and organisation and logistics take more time.
Well yes and no. The planning isn't that different, because it's not one person or one staff doing all of that as the more troops you have, the more headquarters you would have as well, and they can (and would!) simultaneously plan on multiple levels. Logistics, yeah for sure stockpiling would be a massively bigger undertaking but Aurora doesn't really simulate that aside from bringing in a supply formation big enough to cover consumption.
But most importantly,
While I'd like further development in ground combat mechanics, the current system is functional. I'd say let Steve bring C# out first.
Yeah. While I like the idea of fights where both sides are on the defensive just exchanging artillery fire (which would also effectively be the difference between a battle and a war, IMHO), I'm happy to wait and see on that. The rest sounds to me like it's complicating the process for no actual gain, though again it may be best to wait and see.
it's probably best to get C# out in some form and start playing it, to see what sort of shenanigans players get up to. We had that massive argument about ground combat six months ago or so, in which lot of the debate just stemmed from misunderstandings and so on. Especially as Steve has only fought one, special, enemy so far.
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Some of this stuff that you're proposing isn't actually a problem, or is wholly unnecessary. Because you're still thinking of it in terms of Earth based wars at localised level and not interstellar future war on a planetary level.
So things like:
It also is not realistic that 10:1 odds means all 10 divisions get to fire at the same time in reality... a 10:1 odds in reality will never mean 10:1 odds in the field... there are only so many soldiers and material you can throw in... even in terms of artillery to some degree at one point in time.
is not as important as you think. I used to think the same way and this is of course obviously true for our own military history, because ever human war ever has always been constrained and limited by geography. Even the largest human conflict, the Eastern Front of WW2, was limited and only took place over some minuscule 0.0001% of Earth surface.
Once your sensors are good enough that you can pinpoint 1000 power armoured soldiers on the surface of a planet, you have in essence unlimited real estate to encircle and envelope them in three dimensions with your 10,000 power armoured soldiers. We're not doing tactical or even operational level combat here, purely strategic level, so having those 10,000 guys all be able to fire on the 1000 guys is reasonable and believable.
Even asteroids are generally big enough (when modelled in Aurora) to have room for thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles.
Similarly:
in terms of scale what I meant was that an engagement between 2000 or 200.000 on each side should be vastly different in time scale, right now it scale rather linear while in reality it would not as the larger an operation is the more complicated it is and organisation and logistics take more time.
Well yes and no. The planning isn't that different, because it's not one person or one staff doing all of that as the more troops you have, the more headquarters you would have as well, and they can (and would!) simultaneously plan on multiple levels. Logistics, yeah for sure stockpiling would be a massively bigger undertaking but Aurora doesn't really simulate that aside from bringing in a supply formation big enough to cover consumption.
But most importantly,
While I'd like further development in ground combat mechanics, the current system is functional. I'd say let Steve bring C# out first.
Yeah. While I like the idea of fights where both sides are on the defensive just exchanging artillery fire (which would also effectively be the difference between a battle and a war, IMHO), I'm happy to wait and see on that. The rest sounds to me like it's complicating the process for no actual gain, though again it may be best to wait and see.
it's probably best to get C# out in some form and start playing it, to see what sort of shenanigans players get up to. We had that massive argument about ground combat six months ago or so, in which lot of the debate just stemmed from misunderstandings and so on. Especially as Steve has only fought one, special, enemy so far.
Logistics is a universal problem that you will not solve as long as you have individually independent minds around...
As for the sensors I simply disagree life has repeatedly shown that development in one area always develop a counter and then a counter to that counter and so forth, more or less. Weapons versus armour or sensors versus countermeasures and concealment.
I also agree that nothing should be changed at this time which is why I put it into a separate thread and not into the suggestion thread. ;)
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I also agree nothing should be changed yet. There is simply not enough data out there to come to conclusions like "collateral damage is too much" and "ground combat are too fast and brutal".
Nothing wrong with thinking of ideas, however (as long as we keep anything but a simple blurb out of the suggestion/discussion threads to prevent clutter). Ideas give alternate viewpoints and may lead to paying attention to things that we/Steve would otherwise not even consider.
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I would say that the biggest pet peeve I have with the new system is that the "defender" have no real advantage when both sides have max entrenchment. There are little incentive for the "attacker" to put any troops in offensive line until they whittled down the defender from the entrenched position which give the "attacker" as much of an advantage as the "defender". Drop the troops and keep them in support line until max entrenchment kicks in and then fight. The only thing you sacrifice is time, which of course can be a problem.
I think there at least should be some restriction on the availability of the entrenchment bonus on the one that want to attack rather than defend. Right now there are no real difference in stances, just fighting.
There should perhaps at least be a stance on the troops such as defending or attacking, if both forces are on defensive stance only artillery and airstrikes can be performed. If you elect to attack you will suffer a big penalty to the entrenchment bonus, perhaps as much as 75% so armoured forces rather be set at offensive to at least be able to do breakthroughs and give up the entrenchment bonus.
There should always be some bonus to defending. Terrain seem to effect all sides equally so it give no direct advantage to the "defending" side as there are no defending or attacking position except for offensive and defensive line. No real home advantage bonus so to say.
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I would say that the biggest pet peeve I have with the new system is that the "defender" have no real advantage when both sides have max entrenchment. There are little incentive for the "attacker" to put any troops in offensive line until they whittled down the defender from the entrenched position which give the "attacker" as much of an advantage as the "defender". Drop the troops and keep them in support line until max entrenchment kicks in and then fight. The only thing you sacrifice is time, which of course can be a problem.
I think there at least should be some restriction on the availability of the entrenchment bonus on the one that want to attack rather than defend. Right now there are no real difference in stances, just fighting.
There should perhaps at least be a stance on the troops such as defending or attacking, if both forces are on defensive stance only artillery and airstrikes can be performed. If you elect to attack you will suffer a big penalty to the entrenchment bonus, perhaps as much as 75% so armoured forces rather be set at offensive to at least be able to do breakthroughs and give up the entrenchment bonus.
There should always be some bonus to defending. Terrain seem to effect all sides equally so it give no direct advantage to the "defending" side as there are no defending or attacking position except for offensive and defensive line. No real home advantage bonus so to say.
Umm, why would you ever let the enemy land peacefully and dig in? Wouldn't you get half of your forces to instantly attack the enemy "beach head" to avoid this? I mean, as long as the enemy fleet isn't blasting your ground forces at the same time.
Haven't looked at the Updates in a while so I can't remember if there was a penalty or cost to units invading, but the defender should be able to outnumber the enemy.
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In general the only thing the enemy ground forces would be hoping for is to buy time regardless, so its not like being whittled down very slowly is actually a particularly bad outcome for them.
e: Also I kindof agree with the guy saying that we should hold off asking for modifications to things until we have actually played the game for a while. Second guessing and theory crafting before we have even actually played it is kindof pointless because its pretty unlikely that we will be able to figure out how it would actually work just by guessing.
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I'm mostly looking at a scenario where you might have several factions starting at Earth for example... now the stronger faction will basically always win the ground-war as there are no real way to defend as both will be at maximum entrenchment. There are not really any home defence position in this case so the stronger force will win if it is just a bit stronger. It probably should take a fair bit of higher strength to beat someone in that scenario.
It might to some degree work when someone is attacked in a colony and someone are landing forces there as the defender are entrenches and the one landing is not.
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While that is a problem, it's not anything new. In VB6, if you have multiple factions on Earth, the one with the largest ground force will win. In a close-run situation, ground commanders can sway the outcome a little bit. At least C# will give us better multi-faction ground battles, meaning that smaller powers can gang up on bigger powers.
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I too am in the wait and try camp.
I feel that the changes to c# aurora are so massive, I need to try the game before commenting on ground combat balance
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While that is a problem, it's not anything new. In VB6, if you have multiple factions on Earth, the one with the largest ground force will win. In a close-run situation, ground commanders can sway the outcome a little bit. At least C# will give us better multi-faction ground battles, meaning that smaller powers can gang up on bigger powers.
You still had Garrison units that were for those situations when you needed to defend rather than attack, having a big number of those cheap units made it possible for a weaker side to properly defend themselves cheaply.
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Personal Weapon Infantry, and Personal Weapon (Light) Infantry, should perform the same function for C# Aurora. They are fast & cheap to produce, and entrench quickly for incerased defence. They may not be any good for counter-attack, but neither were Garrison battalions.
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Personal Weapon Infantry, and Personal Weapon (Light) Infantry, should perform the same function for C# Aurora. They are fast & cheap to produce, and entrench quickly for incerased defence. They may not be any good for counter-attack, but neither were Garrison battalions.
Not really? Personal Weapon Infantry (normal and light) are definitely good for absorbing fire and also providing some anti-infantry firepower, but they're not really defense oriented in a same HW start - the point was that since an attacker's units can keep their fortification bonus and still fight, there isn't any unit that's better on the defense than the offense.
For attacks on separate planets this is less true, since transport is an issue and heavier units are likely going to provide more combat power per ton. But in situations where tonnage doesn't matter and the units are already fortified, infantry units are equivalent whether attacking or defending.
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Yes... in the new mechanic there are no real defender or attacker, there are just simply fighting.
So two sides that are at peace and suddenly in war both fight from the same level of fortification etc... there are no real defensive or offensive units in that regard and neither can you bunker up in defensive stance in any way.
I think there perhaps should be a clear attacker and defender in any given moment. In general it should take quite a bit more s strength to conquer someone who are just defending their territory. In "reality" it always does. Two sides that don't want to attack should at best engage in skirmishing fights. I even think it should be possible to have local peace.
Let's say you play an Earth multi faction game and two factions want to fight a limited war over some colonies. They don't want to start WW3 back on Earth for the control of a couple of million people in the colonies.
There should basically be three engagement levels, offensive, defensive and stand down mode on each world.
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Yes... in the new mechanic there are no real defender or attacker, there are just simply fighting.
Which is a good thing. Since at least WW1 (perhaps even earlier but I'm not an expert in early modern warfare) battles have not been strictly about an attacker and a defender. Popular culture and pop-history still uses those terms liberally despite it being very misleading. Even in conflicts as ludicrously lopsided as the 2003 Iraq invasion by USA, Iraqis did perform a handful of counter-attacks, and if you go down to the tactical level, almost all modern battles are a mixture of attack and defence.
I think there perhaps should be a clear attacker and defender in any given moment.
I disagree. Aurora ground combat is still very abstract. It's certainly not simulation-lite style like space combat is. It's not a problem that both sides can remain fortified because the fortifications are just an abstract concept of how well the force utilises both natural and constructed features of the planet they are on. Remember, even millions and millions of troops would only use a tiny little blip of a planet's surface.
the point was that since an attacker's units can keep their fortification bonus and still fight, there isn't any unit that's better on the defense than the offense.
This isn't really a problem either. In VB6, the divide between attack strength and defence strength was always ridiculous and extremely difficult to justify from "realism" or even "story" perspective. How can a garrison unit be decent on defence but have literally zero attack ability? How can mobile infantry be better at defending than attacking, when projectile weapons are equally lethal/powerful regardless of circumstances? We had to come up with all sort of silly justifications for why assault infantry was good at assault but bad at defence and so on and so forth, or just ignore the whole thing, as evidence by many player AARs here that gloss over ground combat.
You still had Garrison units that were for those situations when you needed to defend rather than attack, having a big number of those cheap units made it possible for a weaker side to properly defend themselves cheaply.
But just defending would not end the war and the stronger power could just as easily spam garrison themselves and since the weaker powers could not join forces, the conclusion was always the same and the only variable was the length of the ground war - eventually the stronger power would win. At least C# fixes this by allowing the weaker powers to join forces as I said, meaning that multi-faction starts on Earth will have a modicum of balance by default if you're going with 3+ factions.
Let's say you play an Earth multi faction game and two factions want to fight a limited war over some colonies. They don't want to start WW3 back on Earth for the control of a couple of million people in the colonies. There should basically be three engagement levels, offensive, defensive and stand down mode on each world.
This is an entirely different thing and I agree. It was asked for earlier, I recall. While it's a fairly niche thing, it would be very useful for multi-faction Earth starts, to have a situation where even the rear support formations would not engage other powers.
Remember that:
Ground forces can be assigned one of four field positions; front line attack, front line defence, support and rear echelon. Units in support and rear echelon positions cannot directly attack hostile forces but if they possess elements with bombardment weapons they may be assigned to support a front line formation. Support and rear echelon formations can also potentially provide anti-air cover (more in a rules post on ground-space interaction) and supply to front line units. Only formations with all elements supplied can be placed in front line attack mode. Formations placed in front line attack mode lose any fortification bonus.
So if both sides have all units in support or rear echelon, there is no combat taking place since there are no front line units to utilise that support. And if both sides put all their units in front line defence, then there is only bombardment attacks. If one side attacks, then the attacking units cannot use fortifications.
So yeah, it is useful for attacker to first fortify as much as possible, to minimise casualties from defender bombardment, but if they want to capture the planet, they can't just hide in their fortifications.
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So if both sides have all units in support or rear echelon, there is no combat taking place since there are no front line units to utilise that support. And if both sides put all their units in front line defence, then there is only bombardment attacks. If one side attacks, then the attacking units cannot use fortifications.
So yeah, it is useful for attacker to first fortify as much as possible, to minimise casualties from defender bombardment, but if they want to capture the planet, they can't just hide in their fortifications.
That's not how it works currently, that's how we're saying it should work. Currently if both sides have units placed in front line defense, they fight each other as normal while both benefiting from their fortification level; the advantage of front line attack is the chance of breakthroughs.
The idea that if both sides have no units set to front line attack, then units on front line defense should just exchange bombardment fire is literally the suggestion we're making.
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Found it:
(https://i.imgur.com/TJ8yttL.png)
Currently if both sides have units placed in front line defense, they fight each other as normal while both benefiting from their fortification level; the advantage of front line attack is the chance of breakthroughs.
Oh my, are you sure of that? I must have missed that change because I thought front line defence was only shooting at enemy attackers.
Nevermind, it's in the original ground combat rules post. I totally forgot about that.
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Currently if both sides have units placed in front line defense, they fight each other as normal while both benefiting from their fortification level; the advantage of front line attack is the chance of breakthroughs.
Oh my, are you sure of that? I must have missed that change because I thought front line defence was only shooting at enemy attackers.
Admittedly it's hard to pin down since the ground combat details are scattered around through several threads, but at the very least events in the current test campaign indicate it's the case:
Following the armoured attack, the Imperial and Necron forces both mounted local attacks along the line without ever moving on to the strategic offensive. Imperial casualties were high due to their complete lack of fortified positions. During the first six hours after landing, the Imperial Guard lost eleven hundred Guardsman, a hundred anti-vehicle Lascannons, fifty-two Chimera light attack vehicles, fourteen Hydra Flak Platforms, thirty-six supply vehicles, a Leman Russ Battle Tank and a Leman Russ Annihilator. Beyond the immediate combat losses, the Regimental HQs of the 2nd Mordian and 4th Valhallan were both overrun, preventing their commanders from using their skills to direct the battle, and four Vox Caster units were destroyed, reducing the ability of the surface forces to direct orbital bombardment support. The Imperial forces fought bravely, supported by fire from the ships in orbit, and destroyed forty-four Centurions, six Decurions, six Praetorians and seventy-five supply bots. Counter-battery fire from heavy mortars destroyed a pair of Necron artillery pieces.
General Leman Cain, directly commanding the Cadian Corps and senior officer on the surface of Procyon, ordered all units to pull back from the front line. Continuing a direct assault would result in many thousands of casualties and the final outcome would be in doubt. The Imperial forces would establish fortifications to rival their opponents before General Cain would countenance further large-scale operations. He was well aware the Necron forces could leave their fortifications and launch an offensive before his own forces could dig-in, but that would allow a fight on equal terms. Given the defensive nature of the Necrons tactics in space, he doubted they would sacrifice their current advantage for an uncertain offensive.
After a month of effort, each Terran formation was fortified to the limit of its inherent capabilities. The two Ordo Machinum formations did their best to improve those fortifications but they were relatively small compared to the vast array of Guardsman and armoured vehicles. Each of the two formations had a fortification capacity of 4500 tons, which mean they could fortify 4500 tons of ground forces to the maximum possible within ninety days. There were 365,000 tons of ground forces on Procyon. One of the troop transports returned to Terra to load two more armoured formations, the Palladius Armoured Regiment and the Paragonian Tank Regiment, so the vehicles of the Ordo Machinum did their best while the Terran forces waited for reinforcement.
After eight months of inactivity, the attack was resumed on November 4th.
I think it was events in that campaign that sparked the current suggestion. So if we're wrong, then there's no need for that particular suggestion at least.
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Yes... in the new mechanic there are no real defender or attacker, there are just simply fighting.
Which is a good thing. Since at least WW1 (perhaps even earlier but I'm not an expert in early modern warfare) battles have not been strictly about an attacker and a defender. Popular culture and pop-history still uses those terms liberally despite it being very misleading. Even in conflicts as ludicrously lopsided as the 2003 Iraq invasion by USA, Iraqis did perform a handful of counter-attacks, and if you go down to the tactical level, almost all modern battles are a mixture of attack and defence.
I think there perhaps should be a clear attacker and defender in any given moment.
I disagree. Aurora ground combat is still very abstract. It's certainly not simulation-lite style like space combat is. It's not a problem that both sides can remain fortified because the fortifications are just an abstract concept of how well the force utilises both natural and constructed features of the planet they are on. Remember, even millions and millions of troops would only use a tiny little blip of a planet's surface.
the point was that since an attacker's units can keep their fortification bonus and still fight, there isn't any unit that's better on the defense than the offense.
This isn't really a problem either. In VB6, the divide between attack strength and defence strength was always ridiculous and extremely difficult to justify from "realism" or even "story" perspective. How can a garrison unit be decent on defence but have literally zero attack ability? How can mobile infantry be better at defending than attacking, when projectile weapons are equally lethal/powerful regardless of circumstances? We had to come up with all sort of silly justifications for why assault infantry was good at assault but bad at defence and so on and so forth, or just ignore the whole thing, as evidence by many player AARs here that gloss over ground combat.
You still had Garrison units that were for those situations when you needed to defend rather than attack, having a big number of those cheap units made it possible for a weaker side to properly defend themselves cheaply.
But just defending would not end the war and the stronger power could just as easily spam garrison themselves and since the weaker powers could not join forces, the conclusion was always the same and the only variable was the length of the ground war - eventually the stronger power would win. At least C# fixes this by allowing the weaker powers to join forces as I said, meaning that multi-faction starts on Earth will have a modicum of balance by default if you're going with 3+ factions.
Let's say you play an Earth multi faction game and two factions want to fight a limited war over some colonies. They don't want to start WW3 back on Earth for the control of a couple of million people in the colonies. There should basically be three engagement levels, offensive, defensive and stand down mode on each world.
This is an entirely different thing and I agree. It was asked for earlier, I recall. While it's a fairly niche thing, it would be very useful for multi-faction Earth starts, to have a situation where even the rear support formations would not engage other powers.
Remember that:
Ground forces can be assigned one of four field positions; front line attack, front line defence, support and rear echelon. Units in support and rear echelon positions cannot directly attack hostile forces but if they possess elements with bombardment weapons they may be assigned to support a front line formation. Support and rear echelon formations can also potentially provide anti-air cover (more in a rules post on ground-space interaction) and supply to front line units. Only formations with all elements supplied can be placed in front line attack mode. Formations placed in front line attack mode lose any fortification bonus.
So if both sides have all units in support or rear echelon, there is no combat taking place since there are no front line units to utilise that support. And if both sides put all their units in front line defence, then there is only bombardment attacks. If one side attacks, then the attacking units cannot use fortifications.
So yeah, it is useful for attacker to first fortify as much as possible, to minimise casualties from defender bombardment, but if they want to capture the planet, they can't just hide in their fortifications.
No modern warfare have really changed the nature of fortification, knowledge about home territory or terrain as great defensive obstacles. There are many proof of concept for that in modern times. It is only when you fight in terrain devoid of defence such as the dessert or great plains that it is difficult to defend properly.
When we have seen great and quick destruction of enemy forces they have been done with overwhelming force, more or less.
As the game allow full fortification and the possibility to attack the enemy defensive line these things really don't come into the light at all.
The most simple solution would be three flags... offensive, defensive and none engagement.
None engagement
No units can be in the attack front line position. If you are engaged in defensive or offensive combat all your to hit for this 8h period is reduce by 90%. No combat will occur if all sides are at none engagement level. Breakthrough chances are doubled against your forces. You pay no supply for combat this ground combat turn.
Defensive stance
If the opponent is in either defensive or None Engagement you will only perform skirmishing attacks and only pay 15% supply cost for any action your units take. All attacks are reduced by 90% chance to hit except for bombardment and airstrikes that are reduced by 80%.
If a defensive stance army is engaged by a force in Offensive stance normal combat occurs for the defensive army.
Offensive stance
Normal combat occurs, armies in Offensive stance may only count 25% if its fortification levels and units in defensive fronts attacks are reduced by 25%. The army does however not loose its fortification levels if it has them and are in defensive front line.
A side must have ALL units in the same stance, so you can't choose to have some units in one stance and so forth. It is the operational stance of the entire army or nation on that planet.
Two sides in defensive stance will eventually conclude a war, but it will take for ever and the side with the best bombardment and air support will probably win eventually. But losses might be so low that replacing them forever might be a thing.
I think this would be a simple solution if this actually becomes some sort of problem. It does not really change the current mechanics at all and would be an abstraction to the intensity of the war.
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This isn't really a problem either. In VB6, the divide between attack strength and defence strength was always ridiculous and extremely difficult to justify from "realism" or even "story" perspective. How can a garrison unit be decent on defence but have literally zero attack ability? How can mobile infantry be better at defending than attacking, when projectile weapons are equally lethal/powerful regardless of circumstances? We had to come up with all sort of silly justifications for why assault infantry was good at assault but bad at defence and so on and so forth, or just ignore the whole thing, as evidence by many player AARs here that gloss over ground combat.
I'd say that depends entirely on the fiction you're supporting. Insectoid or mechanical races might have Garrison units literally incapable of offensive action, like trapdoor spiders or solar-powered radiation emitters. Assault Infantry might be suicidal warrior-caste individuals who are honour-bound to charge their enemy head-on, and never retreat. Maybe Mobile Infantry are combat engineers who can lethally booby-trap a leaf with two matchsticks and a piece of string, but don't spend a lot of time in markmanship training.
Personally, I'm going to miss only building Garrison and Assault Infantry (& Replacements) for my actual fighting strength, and using everything else for decoration. Reducing the puzzle to two pieces made the math easy and predictable.
But being able to build literally thousands of different unit templates is going to keep me amused for months. The options to model specific fighting forces in incredible detail means I am never again going to be able to send a 'standard division' to invade my neighbours.
I'm still sad, though, that my regiment of pike is going to be exactly as effective on attack as defense. . . as will my company of berserkers.
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Mobile infantry are pretty realistic unit in my opinion as infantry have always been more effective in defence than offence historically.
Anything that rely on being more mobile for strength such as armour usually are more effective in offensive operations and as such are well handled with values where they are at least as good in defence as they are in offence.
It is harder to justify the better at attacking then defending as I can't really see much that could not defend but attack very well, everything could defend of not just attacking as a means of defending themselves if need be.
I could perhaps see this from some alien fiction perspective, but I still feel it to be a bit strange set of skills.
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It is harder to justify the better at attacking then defending as I can't really see much that could not defend but attack very well, everything could defend of not just attacking as a means of defending themselves if need be.
I could perhaps see this from some alien fiction perspective, but I still feel it to be a bit strange set of skills.
Berserkers
WWII Imperial Japan 'Banzai!' charge
WWI Arab Revolt cavalry raids
Finnish light cavalry 'Hakkaa Paalle' tactics
Greek city states' Peltasts
Roman auxilliary slingers, skirmishers, Numidian cavalry. . .
Fire ships
Fire camels!
German and/or Soviet troops hopped up dexedrine / methamphetamines / who-knows-what
Retiarius gladiators (versus Myrmidons, anyways)
Grenade-carriers (Not Grenadiers, with their centuries of tradition and esprit de corps and high morale; but illiterate peasants given a couple/few greandes and told which way the enemy is.)
B-C-N shells / bombs / missiles (which you probably don't want to deploy over your own territory)
Suicide bombers
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Basically, I think the training to inflict shock & disarray and ignore casualties while charging forwards is very different from the training to sit & endure and wait patiently for the most effective moment. I think both have their place in an army, but not every stormtrooper needs to be a sniper, and vice versa. It's certainly going to be faster to train someone for only one style of combat.
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@Jorgen_CAB
--- Well, I know tank bunkers and sandbagging are a thing, but just a couple of tankers w/ some spades aren't going to be able to "dig in" as well as if they had infantry help. Or NOT having tanks to hide / entrench. I'd imagine a unit with better Attack Values versus Defense values is due to them needing the support of defensive units. A tank column w/o infantry support could very well find itself outflanked or even surrounded. I know that doesn't help much without sufficient AT weaponry, but assuming the enemy had such those tanks would be in trouble.
--- I'm just using tanks as an example of a unit where having more Attack then Defense might be sensible.
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It is harder to justify the better at attacking then defending as I can't really see much that could not defend but attack very well, everything could defend of not just attacking as a means of defending themselves if need be.
I could perhaps see this from some alien fiction perspective, but I still feel it to be a bit strange set of skills.
Berserkers
WWII Imperial Japan 'Banzai!' charge
WWI Arab Revolt cavalry raids
Finnish light cavalry 'Hakkaa Paalle' tactics
Greek city states' Peltasts
Roman auxilliary slingers, skirmishers, Numidian cavalry. . .
Fire ships
Fire camels!
German and/or Soviet troops hopped up dexedrine / methamphetamines / who-knows-what
Retiarius gladiators (versus Myrmidons, anyways)
Grenade-carriers (Not Grenadiers, with their centuries of tradition and esprit de corps and high morale; but illiterate peasants given a couple/few greandes and told which way the enemy is.)
B-C-N shells / bombs / missiles (which you probably don't want to deploy over your own territory)
Suicide bombers
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Basically, I think the training to inflict shock & disarray and ignore casualties while charging forwards is very different from the training to sit & endure and wait patiently for the most effective moment. I think both have their place in an army, but not every stormtrooper needs to be a sniper, and vice versa. It's certainly going to be faster to train someone for only one style of combat.
But that is tactical application of a force as aside from the more operational side that Aurora portray.
Attack is a form of defence from an operational stand point. Anyone who employ a completely static defence and no mobile reserves will eventually be destroyed no mater what. Just because something can cause chock does not mean it is not perfectly usable during defensive operations. This is why elusive enemies are so powerful in defence and why a mobile defence is often much stronger than a static defence in general.
If you look at the number of men you need to hold of an offensive force it is not going to decrease just because you have a line full of "berserkers", they just fight tactically different from a pikeman.
That is why I find it peculiar that a unit can have a higher offensive operation value than what they can have while defending in general as attack is a form of most often effective defence.
The best defence in any firefight on the modern battlefield is not armour, it is suppression firepower. If the opponent can't fire at you, you don't need armour in the first place.
The difference in strength from an operational standpoint is the mobility of a unit. The more mobility a unit has the more effective it is in a dual role to support both attack and defence. This is why static units such as Garrisons are so bad at offensive operations. Sure they could potentially be used for some offensive operations, but they are so ill equipped for it that no one would ever use them as such. That does not mean that they will not use attack as a measure of defending themselves in a tactical perspective.
I think I just have a different view of tactical versus operational units strength and weaknesses.
I would generally say that any units that are so one dimensional they they attack no matter the consequences are really weak units as they are extremely predictable by the enemy from an operational or strategical perspective and will be destroyed accordingly by superior firepower. Numidian cavalry (as an example) was not really an offensive formation, being elusive is a very strong defensible characteristics from an operational standpoint as you can harass enemy supply lines and movement from a strategic point of view and thereby restrict enemy operational movement.
In my opinion having a line of heavy infantry standing their ground on a hill, thereby claiming the hill is not operational defensible characteristics but a tactical one. Skirmishers that delay or prevent an enemy army from moving out of an area is a great example of an effective defensive operational use of a formation. The same is the guerrilla fighting formations of VC forces in Vietnam where the elusive nature of the forces meant that winning a battle one day meant loosing the same battlefield tomorrow without the opposing forces even having to fight for it.
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@Jorgen_CAB
--- Well, I know tank bunkers and sandbagging are a thing, but just a couple of tankers w/ some spades aren't going to be able to "dig in" as well as if they had infantry help. Or NOT having tanks to hide / entrench. I'd imagine a unit with better Attack Values versus Defense values is due to them needing the support of defensive units. A tank column w/o infantry support could very well find itself outflanked or even surrounded. I know that doesn't help much without sufficient AT weaponry, but assuming the enemy had such those tanks would be in trouble.
--- I'm just using tanks as an example of a unit where having more Attack then Defense might be sensible.
As I said above, that is tactical use of said equipment, not operational use of it.
Tanks are best used in mobile defence strategies.
Infantry without mobile support have very little option but to dig in, that is not really a strength but a often a disability. Sometimes you also need to defend a particular place and that is best done by something that can hide well inside a fortification. It does not mean that mobility is not in and of itself a defensible trait from an operational standpoint.
This is why large formations employ a vast array of different forces and why a tank in and of itself is not a good tool. You need an organic organisation so that the sum of the individual parts is more powerful than what they are on their own.
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The current mechanic to some extent are quite realistic IF there were some restriction on fortified units to fight with enemy fortified units somehow.
A tank in Aurora C# is still more effective in defence than offence for example, they are probably more effective than infantry to against enemy infantry as their armour protection still mean they will survive more effectively against infantry per resources invested in the against enemy infantry who attack them.
Infantry in Aurora C# are as good on attack as a tank is, because they both have a 0.6 to hit modifier on attack, light vehicles actually are the best at offensive operations with a 0.4 to hit modifier which actually is better than a light vehicles self fortification value of 2 (which is weird). Fortification value of 2 is the same as a 0.5 to hit modifier... although that is if terrain does not modify it further though.
Another thought I had to simplify the current dilemma would perhaps be the following.
When a unit fire on another unit they also compare their relative fortification level and modify their to hit probability accordingly.
If a defensive line unit fire at an enemy defensive line they receive a to hit penalty based on the level of their own and enemy fortification progression.
A unit get a to hit penalty of 45% of their own progression toward their own max fortification level on that planet, plus 45% of how much the enemy progressed as well.
So if both units have max fortification the to hit penalty drop to only 10% of the original one. If you want to conduct effective operations against enemy forces you need to put them into the attacking front line.
I also believe that units in the attacking front line should increase their size so they are easier to hit than defensive line... or simply defensive, support and rear echelon positions reduce their size with the half the fortification progress. So a formation that is fully fortified only count their size as half as big while units in the attacking front line count their full size, or some such. You should still be able to use the defensive line to saturate the front line and draw attention away from the offensive units such as tanks with cheap infantry.
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@Jorgen_CAB
--- That depends on what the Attack and Defense numbers are an abstraction of, too.
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@Jorgen_CAB
--- That depends on what the Attack and Defense numbers are an abstraction of, too.
What I don't like are arguments such as tanks should have 10 attack and 5 defence value as tanks are better on the offence... this is fallacious and if I have ten tanks and you have ten tanks and nothing else and you attack me then my ten tanks are more effective in defending than yours are on attacking (on any terrain). Defending with tanks is a very real thing and tanks works even better in defence if you need to use them as such.
That is also why I fail to see what sort of operational unit would not be better while defending against a mirror unit and nothing else are influencing the battle.
I don't say someone can come up with something but I can't think of anything right on the top of my head.
I agree that under certain circumstances infantry would be more suitable to defend with, such as if vehicles are difficult to move (if the opponent have full air dominance) or you are fighting in really difficult terrain, but terrain will also effect all enemy vehicles equally if not even worse. Different types of equipment and vehicles have different applications depending on the environment is a different thing. It can very well be so that infantry in general are more resource efficient when fighting in urban environments, that does not mean that a vehicle is worthless or still usable for defence, especially versus an opponent uses of the same equipment for offence. Vehicle can still (in the real world) be a force multiplier in combination with infantry in pretty much any environment they fight in. This means that they fight more efficient in conjunction with each other than deploying them separately. The key question is always how many vehicles and tanks and how much manpower to support them is the optimal number.
Aurora 4X does not have that much interaction between units in that regard, some but not much. It is not as if an IFV can protect its infantry from small arms fire and the infantry protect the vehicle from enemy heavy anti-vehicle fire.
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But being able to build literally thousands of different unit templates is going to keep me amused for months. The options to model specific fighting forces in incredible detail means I am never again going to be able to send a 'standard division' to invade my neighbours.
Same. Once the game is released, I plan to build an application that allows you to build out and compare templates and all that stuff. If the game supports importing/exporting templates I'll build a feature that lets you export templates for use in the game, too.
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Now that we have genetic enhancing, let's compare infantry. This assumes that Racial Armour is 10 and Racial Weapon is 10. Cost is not compared since we do not know it yet. I am assuming that anyone willing to genetically enhance their infantry is not going to then skimp on the armour given to them, hence all GE troopers have max armour.
(https://i.imgur.com/EgeCIcW.png)
This was mainly for boarding combat.
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Huh, Assault Infantry and Garrisons? Odd. I always went for Two Mobile Infantry and Two Assault Infantry.
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Huh, Assault Infantry and Garrisons? Odd. I always went for Two Mobile Infantry and Two Assault Infantry.
Garrison units are the best defense per ton of minerals / unit of wealth, and also the best and cheapest PPV (even though technically they're zero PPV -- they instead reduce unrest). Therefore, I end up with dozens or hundreds of them throughout my empire. Might as well use what I already have.