Learning design from sci fi: recreating the UNSC Marines (Halo)

[Iestwyn (OP)]

I was going to do the Infinity, but that'll have to be next; it's kind of ridiculous. So as a first step, I thought I'd try to make my first ground units based on the UNSC marines.

I want to start off by saying that now that I have a rudimentary understanding of ground combat, what I've got here looks terrible. Not necessarily because I made it poorly (though I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes), but because the inspiration didn't translate well into Aurora's mechanics. I tried to make things work as best I could, but there's a lot to be desired. After every formation, I'll mention what I thought didn't work well.

I'd love to know what you'd suggest to fix some of these issues, as well as anything I did wrong that wasn't due to the source material.

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Infantry Battalion
Transport Size: 1,000 tons
Build Cost: 22.8 BP
1x M274 Command Mongoose (LVH: HQ1000)
4x M12 Warthog (LVH: CAP)
12x Marine Grenadier (INF: LAV)
15x Marine Gunner (INF: CAP)
102x Marine Rifleman (INF: PW)

So far as I know, this is... okay. The warthogs don't seem to fit in, but I think everything else turned out alright.

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Armored Battalion
Transport Size: 998 tons
Build Cost: 74.4 BP
1x M274 Command Mongoose (LVH: HQ1000)
2x M552 Sandcat (LVH: LOG)
3x SP42 Cobra (VEH: LB, LAC)
9x M820 Scorpion (VEH: MAV, LAC)

Essentially, the weapon components are a mess. The Scorpion's MAV is alright, but the LACs would ideally be CAP/HCAP and the LB isn't that useful. Now that I'm looking at the stats, I'm not 100% sure why I stuck the LOG in; I think I saw someone stick some logistical support into their armored formation and I copied it without thinking. I thought armored formations tended to use more supply, but it doesn't actually look like it. (Unless I'm misunderstanding the GSP column. The Infantry Battalion's GSP is 288 and the Armored Battalion's GSP is 252; doesn't that refer to how much supply they need?)

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Regiment Assets
Transport Size: 981 tons
Build Cost: 110 BP
1x M10 Mammoth (SHV: HQ5000, MBL, HB)
1x M313 Elephant (SHV: CON, LAA, LAC)
2x M400 Kodiak (HVH: 2xHB)
2x M552 Sandcat (LVH: LOG)

And HERE'S the true disaster. This formation is intended to be superior to three Infantry Battalions and one Armored Battalion. Therefore, I wanted to stick in a bunch of support stuff for the rear echelon position. Specifically HB/MBL, CON, lots of LOG. However, the only units in the Halo universe that kind of capability are all huge vehicles. The Elephant is literally the only thing in the Halo universe that mentions construction, engineering, fortifying, etc., and it's also stuck with what translates to an autocannon and anti-air (it's my understanding that since orbital fighters are bugged, anti-air doesn't have that much use yet?). There wasn't room for much logistical support since everything else took up so much space. I wasn't pleased with the result at all.

So as far as I can tell, the best way to fix it is to move a lot of the HQ and bombardment to static units. That leaves room for a lot more stuff that's currently underrepresented: there'd be more room for logistical and construction vehicles, as well as stationary artillery platforms. Some STO would also help, but I couldn't find any reference to surface-to-orbital weaponry in the Halo universe.

Okay, please feel free to rip into this stuff. What could I do better that I didn't mention? Is there anything fundamental that I'm misunderstanding about ground units/combat?

Thanks in advance!

[xenoscepter]

Ultra-Heavy Vehicles are a thing, they have 4 slots too. Maybe that might help?

[db48x]

A 1000t battalion seems a little light. A larger formation would be more capable.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

A 1000t battalion seems a little light. A larger formation would be more capable.

Fair enough. What's the size of your smallest formation?

[db48x]

A 1000t battalion seems a little light. A larger formation would be more capable.

Fair enough. What's the size of your smallest formation?

My companies are all 12.5kt. Three of those plus an HQ company make a battalion. But of course the names and sizes and ratios are practically chosen out of a hat, maybe Halo has some other ratio they use?

[Iestwyn (OP)]

I couldn't actually find anything on the marines' organization below the corps level, so I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted with them. What's the advantage behind using a few massive formations over a lot of smaller ones? (I haven't had the opportunity to actually participate in ground combat yet, so the answer might be something obvious I haven't experienced.)

[Barkhorn]

The big advantage to using larger formations, in my mind, is it makes for less micromanagement when arranging your order of battle.  For comparison, in my last game I invaded an alien homeworld with 340,000 tons of ground forces and won a tough victory.  Imagine all the clicking involved if my smallest unit had been 1000 tons; I'd have to move ~340 units one at a time into the proper hierarchy, and then set them to the right field position one at a time.  I hope your insurance covers carpal tunnel.  I use 5000 ton battalions as my smallest unit.  A transport capable of carrying it is fairly small, it doesn't take too long to train, and it doesn't take too many to get things done.

I have smaller, 1000 ton units for boarding actions, and 10,000 ton specialist units for surveying and construction activities.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

The big advantage to using larger formations, in my mind, is it makes for less micromanagement when arranging your order of battle.  For comparison, in my last game I invaded an alien homeworld with 340,000 tons of ground forces and won a tough victory.  Imagine all the clicking involved if my smallest unit had been 1000 tons; I'd have to move ~340 units one at a time into the proper hierarchy, and then set them to the right field position one at a time.  I hope your insurance covers carpal tunnel.  I use 5000 ton battalions as my smallest unit.  A transport capable of carrying it is fairly small, it doesn't take too long to train, and it doesn't take too many to get things done.

I have smaller, 1000 ton units for boarding actions, and 10,000 ton specialist units for surveying and construction activities.

Makes sense to me. Given the size of that operation, 5,000 even seems a bit small.

[nuclearslurpee]

As a general advice I'd say that you don't have to feel obligated to stick too closely to the lore, especially where it is a bit thin. Even real-world militaries don't always map well into Aurora, so certainly game lore you can expect to fit in even less without some wiggling. Alternatively of course you can play with the rule of making cool lore stuff first, and making it look neat in Aurora second. Based on what you're doing here I'd suggest looking at the initial post of Steve's Imperium of Man fiction, because he uses some fairly simplistic ground formations based on WH40K lore (which is far from realistic to say the least!) that are not exactly optimal but get the job done reasonably enough. It's a good example of how to blend lore and Aurora mechanics if you just want to shoot things and don't want to get super technical about it. 

Infantry Battalion: you might try treating the infantry/marine battalion (company? At 1,000 tons and ~140 soldiers this is a company-sized formation in most militaries) as a mechanized infantry unit, which means you have the foot riflemen transported and supported by armored fighting vehicles. In that case you have Marines (INF-PW), Warthogs (LVH-CAP), and I believe there are close air support vehicles in the Halo games (Banshee?) which you could use as LVH-MAV for an anti-armor capability. "Vehicle" can mean whatever you want!

As a general pro-tip, consider having 2x command elements in a formation instead of 1x, so that if one gets killed you can still receive bonuses from higher HQs (although this may be bugged right now).

Armored Battalion: glancing at (Googling) the lore, the Scorpion would be better as MAV/(H)CAP as it has a secondary MG rather than a cannon. Reasonable change and VEH-MAV/CAP is a pretty standard early-game main battle tank in Aurora so it works well.

Putting LOG into a formation like this can work two ways. On one hand, it can give the formation extra staying power particularly on the offensive; on the other hand, LOG is not a combat element and doesn't contribute to killing things directly so could be a hindrance that gets shot up and dies quickly. For a formation this small I probably wouldn't have LOG, but for a 5,000 ton battalion it would be okay to have some. In either case you want a lot of LOG in the rear echelon superior formation to be your main supply source.

HQ Assets: I'd generally avoid mixing HB and MBL and settle on one or the other. The MBL on the Mammoth could probably be some size of AA weapon instead (also matches the lore?). Otherwise, without digging too much into the lore I'd just say that you really want either a bigger formation (5,000 tons or more), or you want to split out the LOG into a separate unit - 1,000 tons of LOG gives you 16 Sandcats and a total of 8,000 GSP which will support a pretty good amount of troops for a good, long offensive. In either case, that will let you figure out how you want to fit your HB/AA/HQ together separately if you stick with 1,000-ton formations. Note that SHV/UHV are extremely heavy, so I'd probably not recommend using them in anything smaller than a 5,000-ton unit just for practical reasons. Generally I'd only use SHV in a front-line breakthrough formation, as the massive weight and armor isn't worth a lot in the rear echelon, but here we have lore to contend with so we will use it and be badass about it. 

So keeping it simple and sticking with 1,000-ton formations, one idea would be something like:

Infantry Battalion: treat it as a mechanized formation and the vehicles fit in perfectly
100x Marines (INF-PW)
8x Warthog (LVH-CAP)
6x Banshee (LVH-MAV)
2x Mongoose (LVH-HQ1)

Armored Battalion: The only change I'd make here is MAV/CAP on the Scorpion and move the LOG to a rear formation
10x Scorpion (VEH-MAV/CAP)
5x Cobra (VEH-LAC/LAC)
2x Mongoose (LVH-HQ1)

HQ Assets: Separate the LOG and you have more room for your other things. It's not the neatest-looking loadout, but HQ formations are always ugly and this will get the job done just fine.
1x Mammoth (SHV-MAA/HB/HQ6) - HQ6 to support the above plus a logistics formation
1x Elephant (SHV-CON/LAA/CAP) - change from LAC to CAP since this is again a MG I think?
3x Kodiak (HVH-HB/HB)

Logistics Support Battalion: 16x Sandcat (LVH-LOG), there's not really a need for a commander here so no Mongoose.

If you decide to scale things up to 5,000 tons per battalion, you can mostly just multiply by 5x and be fine (keep only1x or 2x HQ as the HQ element size will increase). Again, this is just one idea for how to get reasonable formations from the units you're working with, by all means don't just do what I've done if you have a better/more fun idea.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Dude, I want to say how valuable your feedback has been. You always take the time to offer a lot of incredibly in-depth advice, and it really helps a lot.

A few questions:

I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought it was usually best to keep all infantry and vehicles in one place. Not accurate?

Related, but what's a breakthrough formation? I haven't had the chance to actually participate in the new ground combat yet (haven't gotten there in my current run), so it may be something obvious I just haven't experienced yet.

I was a little fuzzy about the relationship between logistics/construction units helping other formations. From the notes, it looked like formations would only draw on the supplies and construction assets of their superiors, meaning that a battalion wouldn't look for help from another battalion. That restricted me a bit, side it meant I had to put all my CON/LOG in the HQ formation. Was I mistaken?

Lastly: were my ideas about what was wrong and how to fix it accurate? Did I understand static units correctly?

Thanks again!

[StarshipCactus]

For Halo lore stuff, check out Halopedia. This page might be helpful to you in organising units.
 
https://www.halopedia.org/UNSC_military_organization

[Garfunkel]

Few of us did some testing and few big formations work better in combat than lots of small formations because the big ones will constantly get multiple breakthroughs whereas the small ones will only get few if any.

However, even that difference can be solved by commander bonuses not to mention tech or superior numbers.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Makes sense. How big are we talking? I've heard as low as 5000 and as high as 12,500.

[db48x]

I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought it was usually best to keep all infantry and vehicles in one place. Not accurate?

I'm not sure what you mean by "in one place" here. Certainly any formation with guns needs to be in the front line attack or front line defence (with the exception that bombardment and AA weapons can go in support or even rear echelon).

Related, but what's a breakthrough formation? I haven't had the chance to actually participate in the new ground combat yet (haven't gotten there in my current run), so it may be something obvious I just haven't experienced yet.

A breakthrough is essentially a random event that can happen when a large cohesive formation attacks a smaller less cohesive one, and gains a second opportunity to attack. The details are all in a post here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109786#msg109786

I was a little fuzzy about the relationship between logistics/construction units helping other formations. From the notes, it looked like formations would only draw on the supplies and construction assets of their superiors, meaning that a battalion wouldn't look for help from another battalion. That restricted me a bit, side it meant I had to put all my CON/LOG in the HQ formation. Was I mistaken?

I'm not sure about the rules for construction units, but you're right about logistics. Elements that need supplies can draw on vehicular logistics elements from a parent formation, or from infantry logistics elements within their own formation of none of the parents have vehicular logistics elements left.

Lastly: were my ideas about what was wrong and how to fix it accurate? Did I understand static units correctly?

So as far as I can tell, the best way to fix it is to move a lot of the HQ and bombardment to static units. That leaves room for a lot more stuff that's currently underrepresented: there'd be more room for logistical and construction vehicles, as well as stationary artillery platforms. Some STO would also help, but I couldn't find any reference to surface-to-orbital weaponry in the Halo universe.

Don't forget that you can have as many layers of formations as you like. Theater ? Army Group ? Army ? Division ? Brigade ? Battalion ? Company, each of them with a commander that provides bonuses! Ok, seven levels is probably overkill, since the bonuses get smaller for each extra layer, and it's going to add to the micro. On the other hand, you do start with 9 ground force commander ranks…

Still, most of your logistics and construction elements can be in the highest layer, furthest back from the action. I do like the idea of using SHV for construction and HQ elements though; that's very Halo. Perhaps the higher-level HQ elements would be static, but the more mobile units need a more mobile HQ.

As for your STO elements, they mount ordinary ship weapons. Thus, you can mount your big honking spinal lasers or whatever you use for your ships. Do note however that STO weapons are rather more expensive than normal ground units of the same size, so they take ages to build. I would make your batteries half or even one quarter the size of your normal unit size. They also don't need supplies and their attacks aren't aided by supporting artillery, so they don't benefit as much from having superior formations. You'll still want one or two layers for bonuses though.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Excellent; this is great stuff!

I was wondering, though: you guys have sold me on the usefulness of deep command structures, but I'm not sure how that would work in practice. The problem for me is redundancy vs specialization.

Real command structures get more and more specialized assets the higher you go (rifles, to tanks, to aircraft, etc). I think I can see specialization in a few layers: guns or armor at the bottom, both one layer up, artillery the layer after that, and STOs after that. That makes four layers: infantry/armor battalions, regiments with access to both, brigades with an added artillery battalion, and divisions with an added STO battalion. Maybe corps with xenoarchaeology, construction, and survey battalions added on.

... Actually, now that I've written that out, that seems like a decent idea. Fairly modular, too: you can add, remove, or swap out battalions for others depending on the needs of the situation and the transportation restrictions. For example, a garrison regiment might swap out the armored battalion for a construction one to take advantage of fortifications (assuming that a battalion can fortify another battalion, which I'm not sure about).

How's that sound?