Additions to Ground Combat

[SteveAlt (OP)]

In v3.1 every unit has a readiness state that always remains at 100% so it has no actual effect. Also, a unit is either completely intact or totally destroyed. Both of these situations will change in v3.2. In v3.2, when a unit is damaged as a result of combat it will lose a random amount of readiness from 1-50%. This is modified by current morale using the formula: Modified Readiness Loss = Readiness Loss / (Morale/100)

A unit with a readiness of less than 40% will be unable to attack. Defending units will continue defending until destroyed. Readiness will return at a rate of 100% per year. A commander with a ground force training rating can add this to the rate of readiness recovery. So a unit with a commander with a training rating of 100 will regain readiness at 200% per year.

In v3.1, morale is only ever modified by training. In v3.2, there is a one third chance than morale will increase or decrease as a result of casualties. If after suffering casualties the unit readiness is still above 80%, the unit will increase morale from 1-10 as a result of combat experience. If after casualties, readiness is below 81, the unit will lose morale due to heavy losses. Morale is recovered in the same way as readiness but will never rise to more than 100 due to recovery. It can only exceed 100 due to training or combat experience.

Steve

[SteveAlt (OP)]

And there's more...

Now I am fighting some ground combat I realised you can't actually shoot at ground units with spacecraft in v3.1. Therefore in v3.2 you can detect ground forces by using an active sensor with a resolution of 5 or less (or a higher resolution sensor that is close enough to pick up resolution 5 objects). This is to simulate that detecting ground units isn't that easy. The total number of ground units does not affect your detection chance (just as many small ships are no easier to detect than one small ship). Any detected ground units show up a single contact for each population with the contact strength based on the total base attack and defence strengths of the ground units assigned to that population that are not within PDCs. For example, if a population has ten mobile infantry which are 5/10 attack/defence, the contact strength would be 10 x (5+10) = 150. Ground units within PDCs cannot be detected. Once detected, ground units can be fired on like any other active sensor contact.

As ground units are effectively immobile, hitting them once you detect them is going to be fairly easy. Given their likely reaction of dispersing to avoid damage, wiping them out may be more of a problem. When a weapon hits a ground unit, be it a missile or a laser (assuming thin or no atmosphere for the latter), it reduces readiness by a random number between 1 and 10x the damage. So if a missile with a 6 point warhead struck a ground unit it would reduce readiness by 1-60%. This means that on average, an infantry unit with full readiness is going to need about 20 points of damage to destroy it. Half the base damage from the attack is applied as collateral damage against the population in which the ground units is located. However, if that ground unit is currently attacking another population then the collateral damage is applied against the population under attack. In other words, if you nuke a ground unit that is attacking your territory then it's your territory that takes the collateral damage.

Steve