The reservist-active approach

[vorpal+5 (OP)]

Has anyone of you created his army by forming reservists formations, acting as a pool of men and equipments, and then using these big blobs of units to create final formations? I was considering this approach, as I still don't know what will be the final OOB of my army...

Side question, are you creating replacements units? It seems inefficient to have to pull out a unit to fill up its ranks.


Side-side question, are units engaged in combat exhausting themselves, do they need to rest? Or you can have them fight continuously, refilling losses as necessary. That would be more realistic although perhaps too much. But then, we have that for ships, right?

[Gyrfalcon]

Units engaged in combat don't exhaust themselves, but if you don't have enough organic supply to the formation or its parent formation, they will run themselves out of supply and their combat efficiency will nose dive as a result.

The inability to automate replacing combat losses in some fashion is what is keeping me from playing the campaigns I want to start - ground combat is an integral component, and I don't want to deal with the annoyance of having to manually fix things for every damaged unit down to the company level.

[DFNewb]

I have been making reservists of supply trucks. Still not sure if you can just put them as a child in your biggest parent formation of if you need to manually transfer them into the parent formation but supplies seem like something you really need on the side and I stopped putting in supplies in my regular formations.

[Droll]

Units engaged in combat don't exhaust themselves, but if you don't have enough organic supply to the formation or its parent formation, they will run themselves out of supply and their combat efficiency will nose dive as a result.

The inability to automate replacing combat losses in some fashion is what is keeping me from playing the campaigns I want to start - ground combat is an integral component, and I don't want to deal with the annoyance of having to manually fix things for every damaged unit down to the company level.

Although inefficient from a build point perspective I've adopted a tour system where any division that has been through a large combat operation where it takes significant casualties is "honourably discharged", AKA I scrap it completely and replace it with a fresh copy. Again, a total rebuild is inefficient in terms of build points but this gets around having to hunt down which companies need replenishment.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

oh the dream of getting my men to full combat capabilities... oh the dream.

[DFNewb]

oh the dream of getting my men to full combat capabilities... oh the dream.

Isn't my idea great?

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11569.msg135401#new

[liveware]

Has anyone of you created his army by forming reservists formations, acting as a pool of men and equipments, and then using these big blobs of units to create final formations? I was considering this approach, as I still don't know what will be the final OOB of my army...

Side question, are you creating replacements units? It seems inefficient to have to pull out a unit to fill up its ranks.


Side-side question, are units engaged in combat exhausting themselves, do they need to rest? Or you can have them fight continuously, refilling losses as necessary. That would be more realistic although perhaps too much. But then, we have that for ships, right?

This has been my approach in my most recent campaign. However, I design my command units with a particular maximum formation size in mind.

Furthermore, I have two basic formation design concepts. The first is a fully equipped command post formation with a 'standard' unit allocation. The second is a resupply formation with no command post which serves only as a convenient means of resupplying my command post formations with fresh troops.

[liveware]

I have been making reservists of supply trucks. Still not sure if you can just put them as a child in your biggest parent formation of if you need to manually transfer them into the parent formation but supplies seem like something you really need on the side and I stopped putting in supplies in my regular formations.

My understanding is that if you assign your supply trucks to the highest level formation in your OOB hierarchy then all sub-formations will resupply from the top level formation in the hierarchy.

For example:

A company commands 4 platoons which each commands 3 squadrons. If a squadron needs to resupply, it will first check with the company for supplies. If the company has no available supplies, the squadron will check with it's platoon. If the platoon has no supplies, the squadron will consume its own supply units.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Given how the rules of the ground combat work there is no point in putting supply in with forward formations, you always want supplies as high up the chain as possible and definitely at the rear echelon position.

If you assault a planet you will even have most of the supply stay with the ships in orbit and bring it down as you need it.

[bankshot]

I have been making reservists of supply trucks. Still not sure if you can just put them as a child in your biggest parent formation of if you need to manually transfer them into the parent formation but supplies seem like something you really need on the side and I stopped putting in supplies in my regular formations.

My understanding is that if you assign your supply trucks to the highest level formation in your OOB hierarchy then all sub-formations will resupply from the top level formation in the hierarchy.

For example:

A company commands 4 platoons which each commands 3 squadrons. If a squadron needs to resupply, it will first check with the company for supplies. If the company has no available supplies, the squadron will check with it's platoon. If the platoon has no supplies, the squadron will consume its own supply units.

Would you mind posting an example OOB?  I've read over the ground force thread at http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109786#msg109786 but still don't feel like I have a firm grasp of how to put together a proper division.

[liveware]

Attached is the OOB from my recent successful invasion of a spoiler race world. Casualties were quite heavy and I had too many supply units overall. The 161st Platoon would have been far more useful as another fully equipped Marine Infantry Platoon instead of a supply platoon, for example.

As shown, each infantry squadron is supported by either it's adjacent artillery squadron OR it's associated platoon command post (which possess orbital bombardment capability in lieu of artillery). Future formation designs will almost certainly increase the amount of artillery in the command post formations and reduce the amount of the GSP in the front line formations.

However, the invasion was successful. I note that artillery is extremely useful and I recommend it's use in all situations except boarding.

I have not yet built division sized formations. I could theoretically justify regiments at this point but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Also, my garrison armies are MUCH larger than my planetary invasion armies at present, since my planetary invaders use 250 ton capacity drop ships while my garrison troops get hauled around by 5k ton capacity troop transports.

That said, unrest on Mars may result in the deployment of division sized formations if the political situation there does not soon improve...

*EDIT: After reviewing some of my previous posts, I realize my posted OOB may be misleading... my posted supply formations consist entirely of logistics units, not to be confused with my statements in previous posts!