Author Topic: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat  (Read 15409 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #30 on: October 20, 2009, 05:01:36 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Kurt"
Sixty plus percent casualties before the combat starts, against a relatively low speed ship.  Hmmm...I guess no one will be making boarding attempts against intact warships, which tend to be much faster.  

Not that that is a bad thing <G>.
That is pretty much what I was aiming for. Boarding combat shouldn't be a standard tactic against warships unless they have been severely damaged. Against slow moving types such as asteroid miners or fuel  harvesters, it should be possible but difficult. Although bear in mind that using a 10,000 km/s assault shuttle design for the combat drop against the 277 km/s harvester would have avoided any casualties during the drop.

Is the assault pod system (forget exact name) small enough to fit into ship w/o a bridge (i.e. GB engines)?
Yes, and the company-size version is small enough to fit in a fighter

Code: [Select]
Eagle class Dropship    1000 tons     36 Crew     136.4 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 3-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 16%    IFR: 0.2%    Maintenance Capacity 43 MSP    Max Repair 60 MSP
Drop Capacity: 1 Battalion    

Fast Attack Ion Engine (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 700%    Signature 120    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 12.9 billion km   (24 days at full power)

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Phoenix class Assault Shuttle    170 tons     7 Crew     25.9 BP      TCS 3.4  TH 36  EM 0
10588 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 34%    IFR: 0.5%    Maintenance Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 15 MSP
Drop Capacity: 1 Company

FTR Ion Engine (1)    Power 36    Fuel Use 7000%    Signature 36    Armour 0    Exp 25%

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a fighter for production and combat purposes
Steve
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #31 on: October 20, 2009, 08:29:17 AM »
If I recall correctly,  currently ship to ship tractors can't be used in this scenario.  As in, match a 0.0 course/speed, tractor the ship to be boarded, drop speed to zero (or at least your ship to zero), and then attempt the boarding action.

If that is correct...perhaps some form of an assault grapple can be added to the game.  

I can invision to forms of "space marines".  Airborne types that "jump" from assault transports for boarding...and Air Assault types that have specialized transports to grapple with the target so that they may "dis-embark" on to the skin of the target.  Later versions might even be equiped with a means of breaching hulls for the troops as well.

<edit>  I had not read the board rules in detail prior to posting,  I know better.

The drop module is akin to Heinlein's drop system in "Starship Troopers".  For my above suggestion to work either an "assault bay" is needed or allow to troop bays to function as such.  

Part of my military background is airmobile/air assault, from the POV of the crew getting the troops on the ground.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline Andrew

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #32 on: October 24, 2009, 04:03:48 PM »
Do cargo handling facilities speed embarction of troops?
 

Offline welchbloke

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #33 on: October 24, 2009, 04:35:13 PM »
Quote from: "Andrew"
Do cargo handling facilities speed embarction of troops?
In the first post of this thread Steve posted:
Quote
Loading ground units from Bays on one ship to Combat Drop Modules on another can be done in space, which is necessary if smaller drop ships were going to load troops from bays on large troop transports before attempting a planetary assault. This is done in exactly the same way as picking up from populations except you get a list of divisions to choose from in a friendly fleet. It will still take several hours or days. In a similar way, you can also load troops from bays into drop modules within the same fleet. When moving troops between ships, you get the benefit of the cargo handling systems on both ships, so the transfers can be done fairly quickly. This is especially important when loading smaller drop ships or assault shuttles as they may not have any cargo handling facilities and therefore will rely on the cargo handling facilities of the vessel from which they are loading their troops. Because of this you could carry assault shuttles or drop ships on a carrier and then send them load troops from a large transport, using the transport's cargo handling system to speed the loading.
So yes you do benefit from the use of cargo handling facilities.  Unless I have totally misunderstood your post and you were asking about embarking troops from a planet.  In which case I'm not sure but Steve's post would imply that if a ship had cargo handling facilities it would speed up the embarkation procedure from any source.
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #34 on: October 25, 2009, 09:58:15 AM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "Andrew"
Do cargo handling facilities speed embarction of troops?
In the first post of this thread Steve posted:
Quote
Loading ground units from Bays on one ship to Combat Drop Modules on another can be done in space, which is necessary if smaller drop ships were going to load troops from bays on large troop transports before attempting a planetary assault. This is done in exactly the same way as picking up from populations except you get a list of divisions to choose from in a friendly fleet. It will still take several hours or days. In a similar way, you can also load troops from bays into drop modules within the same fleet. When moving troops between ships, you get the benefit of the cargo handling systems on both ships, so the transfers can be done fairly quickly. This is especially important when loading smaller drop ships or assault shuttles as they may not have any cargo handling facilities and therefore will rely on the cargo handling facilities of the vessel from which they are loading their troops. Because of this you could carry assault shuttles or drop ships on a carrier and then send them load troops from a large transport, using the transport's cargo handling system to speed the loading.
So yes you do benefit from the use of cargo handling facilities.  Unless I have totally misunderstood your post and you were asking about embarking troops from a planet.  In which case I'm not sure but Steve's post would imply that if a ship had cargo handling facilities it would speed up the embarkation procedure from any source.
Cargo handling facilities speed up loading/unloading from a planet as well as from ship to ship. If two ships are involved, then all cargo handling facilities on both ships are included.

Steve
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #35 on: December 17, 2009, 09:07:05 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The advantages of the Marine Battalion are that it can split into Marine Companies and both Marine units are very effective in fighting boarding actions against ships and PDCs.

Ok, I've only built two Marine Companies so far, so I might just be missing the mechanism, but I don't see where this split/unsplit is coded up.  Whether or not it is, I have the following suggestions:

1) Introduce a Marine Battalion HQ unit that can have 4 companies subordinate to it.  This would allow the companies to be grouped on the ground unit screen and appear like a Marine Battalion unit.  The stats would have to be adjusted to get the combat power right for 4 companies + HQ = battalion.
2) Allow a Marine Battalion HQ to be one of the units subordinate to a Bridge HQ.  That way it wouldn't matter if you split or unsplit.
3) If you haven't coded up the split/merge code, you could have it be an operation like "convert to cadre" that can be done on the Battalion HQ (and would require 4 subordinate companies).
4)  I think I read that engineering regiments were 4 battalions in size.  Why not just make them engineering brigades and make them size 5?
5)  If you have the split/merge code written, why not allow splitting of engineering regiments into an HQ and 4 battalions?  You could set it up so the HQ modifies the effectiveness of the battalions, e.g. (assuming they all cost the same) a battalion has 0.125*industrial capacity of a brigade, but any battalion in a formation with an HQ is has this doubled.  So 4 battalions would give 0.5*brigade, but if they had an HQ this would be doubled to 1.0* brigade.
6)  You could play the same game with ground combat ratings - being in a formation might act as a multiplier on combat ratings.

None of these are high priority for me, except 1 & 2 would be nice to reduce clutter on the ground units screen.

John
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #36 on: December 26, 2009, 08:08:08 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The advantages of the Marine Battalion are that it can split into Marine Companies and both Marine units are very effective in fighting boarding actions against ships and PDCs.

Ok, I've only built two Marine Companies so far, so I might just be missing the mechanism, but I don't see where this split/unsplit is coded up.  Whether or not it is, I have the following suggestions:

1) Introduce a Marine Battalion HQ unit that can have 4 companies subordinate to it.  This would allow the companies to be grouped on the ground unit screen and appear like a Marine Battalion unit.  The stats would have to be adjusted to get the combat power right for 4 companies + HQ = battalion.
2) Allow a Marine Battalion HQ to be one of the units subordinate to a Bridge HQ.  That way it wouldn't matter if you split or unsplit.
3) If you haven't coded up the split/merge code, you could have it be an operation like "convert to cadre" that can be done on the Battalion HQ (and would require 4 subordinate companies).
4)  I think I read that engineering regiments were 4 battalions in size.  Why not just make them engineering brigades and make them size 5?
5)  If you have the split/merge code written, why not allow splitting of engineering regiments into an HQ and 4 battalions?  You could set it up so the HQ modifies the effectiveness of the battalions, e.g. (assuming they all cost the same) a battalion has 0.125*industrial capacity of a brigade, but any battalion in a formation with an HQ is has this doubled.  So 4 battalions would give 0.5*brigade, but if they had an HQ this would be doubled to 1.0* brigade.
6)  You could play the same game with ground combat ratings - being in a formation might act as a multiplier on combat ratings.

None of these are high priority for me, except 1 & 2 would be nice to reduce clutter on the ground units screen
I forgot about the idea of split and recombine after I mentioned it in the original post :). I will get around to adding it.

The idea of splitting into 4 companies and a HQ is a good one, although I will need to play around with which officers can command each one.

HQs already add a bonus as their commander's ground combat rating affects all units under his command. So a battalion on the same planet as its brigade and division HQs will get multipliers from its own commander, the brigade commander and the division commander.

Goood idea re the engineers. I will implement that for v4.8

Steve
 

Offline Elmo

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #37 on: January 04, 2010, 05:24:02 PM »
Is it possible for the crew of a ship that is being boarded to blow up the ship if they feel the ship will be lost?  If not could this be added?
 

Offline mrwigggles

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #38 on: January 15, 2010, 10:30:57 PM »
The idea of troops jumping from one ship to the next, sounds bad ass, if suicidal. (With 80 percent causality for the drop, apparently so.)

Though other RTS games that feature boarding have included vessels that breach armor of other ships and develop boarding crew directly. I would really like to see this happen, along with the space jumping.

Can we expect to see pirates entities as psedo civilizations? Something were there couldn't be any diplomacy or espionage and just cause unrest in system were pirating is happen or station, and possibly setting up pirate outpost in systems, staying hidden.
 

Offline Journier

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #39 on: February 19, 2010, 09:52:28 PM »
I would just like to say this is possibly the most awesome part of the game I have seen ^_^
 

Offline schroeam

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #40 on: February 25, 2010, 09:24:10 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The advantages of the Marine Battalion are that it can split into Marine Companies and both Marine units are very effective in fighting boarding actions against ships and PDCs.

Ok, I've only built two Marine Companies so far, so I might just be missing the mechanism, but I don't see where this split/unsplit is coded up.  Whether or not it is, I have the following suggestions:

1) Introduce a Marine Battalion HQ unit that can have 4 companies subordinate to it.  This would allow the companies to be grouped on the ground unit screen and appear like a Marine Battalion unit.  The stats would have to be adjusted to get the combat power right for 4 companies + HQ = battalion.
2) Allow a Marine Battalion HQ to be one of the units subordinate to a Bridge HQ.  That way it wouldn't matter if you split or unsplit.
3) If you haven't coded up the split/merge code, you could have it be an operation like "convert to cadre" that can be done on the Battalion HQ (and would require 4 subordinate companies).
4)  I think I read that engineering regiments were 4 battalions in size.  Why not just make them engineering brigades and make them size 5?
5)  If you have the split/merge code written, why not allow splitting of engineering regiments into an HQ and 4 battalions?  You could set it up so the HQ modifies the effectiveness of the battalions, e.g. (assuming they all cost the same) a battalion has 0.125*industrial capacity of a brigade, but any battalion in a formation with an HQ is has this doubled.  So 4 battalions would give 0.5*brigade, but if they had an HQ this would be doubled to 1.0* brigade.
6)  You could play the same game with ground combat ratings - being in a formation might act as a multiplier on combat ratings.

None of these are high priority for me, except 1 & 2 would be nice to reduce clutter on the ground units screen
I forgot about the idea of split and recombine after I mentioned it in the original post :). I will get around to adding it.

The idea of splitting into 4 companies and a HQ is a good one, although I will need to play around with which officers can command each one.

HQs already add a bonus as their commander's ground combat rating affects all units under his command. So a battalion on the same planet as its brigade and division HQs will get multipliers from its own commander, the brigade commander and the division commander.

Goood idea re the engineers. I will implement that for v4.8

Steve
Steve,
Has this been implemented, and if so, how does it work, and if not, is it on the short list?

Adam.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Combat
« Reply #41 on: February 28, 2010, 09:43:51 AM »
Quote from: "adradjool"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Ok, I've only built two Marine Companies so far, so I might just be missing the mechanism, but I don't see where this split/unsplit is coded up.  Whether or not it is, I have the following suggestions:

1) Introduce a Marine Battalion HQ unit that can have 4 companies subordinate to it.  This would allow the companies to be grouped on the ground unit screen and appear like a Marine Battalion unit.  The stats would have to be adjusted to get the combat power right for 4 companies + HQ = battalion.
2) Allow a Marine Battalion HQ to be one of the units subordinate to a Bridge HQ.  That way it wouldn't matter if you split or unsplit.
3) If you haven't coded up the split/merge code, you could have it be an operation like "convert to cadre" that can be done on the Battalion HQ (and would require 4 subordinate companies).
4)  I think I read that engineering regiments were 4 battalions in size.  Why not just make them engineering brigades and make them size 5?
5)  If you have the split/merge code written, why not allow splitting of engineering regiments into an HQ and 4 battalions?  You could set it up so the HQ modifies the effectiveness of the battalions, e.g. (assuming they all cost the same) a battalion has 0.125*industrial capacity of a brigade, but any battalion in a formation with an HQ is has this doubled.  So 4 battalions would give 0.5*brigade, but if they had an HQ this would be doubled to 1.0* brigade.
6)  You could play the same game with ground combat ratings - being in a formation might act as a multiplier on combat ratings.

None of these are high priority for me, except 1 & 2 would be nice to reduce clutter on the ground units screen
I forgot about the idea of split and recombine after I mentioned it in the original post :). I will get around to adding it.

The idea of splitting into 4 companies and a HQ is a good one, although I will need to play around with which officers can command each one.

HQs already add a bonus as their commander's ground combat rating affects all units under his command. So a battalion on the same planet as its brigade and division HQs will get multipliers from its own commander, the brigade commander and the division commander.

Goood idea re the engineers. I will implement that for v4.8
Has this been implemented, and if so, how does it work, and if not, is it on the short list?
The split and recombine still isn't done. It is on the short list

Steve
 

Offline James Patten

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Comba
« Reply #42 on: March 29, 2010, 06:13:30 AM »
Has split and recombine of engineering units been implemented for 5.02?  I'm guessing that it has not, because I just built a troop transport with 2 troop bays and it would not take my engineers.  I had to mock up a troop transport with 10 bays in order to take the engineers.  Argg!
 

Offline Shadow

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Comba
« Reply #43 on: March 29, 2010, 08:07:32 AM »
Quote from: "James Patten"
Has split and recombine of engineering units been implemented for 5.02?  I'm guessing that it has not, because I just built a troop transport with 2 troop bays and it would not take my engineers.  I had to mock up a troop transport with 10 bays in order to take the engineers.  Argg!
Yeah, as brigades, engineer units require 5 troop bays each, as they're the size of 5 battalions.
 

Offline jocan2003

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Re: Ground Forces: Transportation, New units, Boarding Comba
« Reply #44 on: May 09, 2010, 12:58:44 PM »
Quick and funny one... i have 5.14 how do i unload the marine from my assault shuttle back on the mothership?