Ground Troops

[schroeam (OP)]

Steve,

I've been thinking about the reality of placing a division of ground troops, or more, on a desolate moon colony as a garrison for years on end, and when they are finally moved to a forward area where they are needed for combat, their readiness is pretty much good to go.

To that end, how about some sort of supply consumable used by ground forces on planets that do not have colony populations above, say, five million.  This would be used to replenish readiness of a unit as it uses parts, ammo, and people in it's daily operations.  Say a division is deployed with the necessary equipment to operate for six months, but after that time it's readiness drops until it is no longer combat effective.  The supplies would be taken to the divisions by freighters, or troop transports, and would include the ability to provide replacements for soldiers lost due to combat, supplies used, etc.  They would be able to be stockpiled, to allow for long periods when the supplies may not be delivered (planetary blockade) and slowly be used up for every day, or five day, beyond six months that the unit is deployed.  

The real goal would be to provide a realistic approach to battle losses on a hostile planet and their subsequent replacement, bringing the unit's readiness back up after a series of battles.  This would also make using troops to address unrest on distant colonies much more expensive and require constant supply runs for the garrisons of conquered planets.

I know with all the other changes going into 4.1 this is far from being on the burner, let alone out of the box, but just a thought for future versions.

Adam.

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve,

I've been thinking about the reality of placing a division of ground troops, or more, on a desolate moon colony as a garrison for years on end, and when they are finally moved to a forward area where they are needed for combat, their readiness is pretty much good to go.

To that end, how about some sort of supply consumable used by ground forces on planets that do not have colony populations above, say, five million.  This would be used to replenish readiness of a unit as it uses parts, ammo, and people in it's daily operations.  Say a division is deployed with the necessary equipment to operate for six months, but after that time it's readiness drops until it is no longer combat effective.  The supplies would be taken to the divisions by freighters, or troop transports, and would include the ability to provide replacements for soldiers lost due to combat, supplies used, etc.  They would be able to be stockpiled, to allow for long periods when the supplies may not be delivered (planetary blockade) and slowly be used up for every day, or five day, beyond six months that the unit is deployed.  

The real goal would be to provide a realistic approach to battle losses on a hostile planet and their subsequent replacement, bringing the unit's readiness back up after a series of battles.  This would also make using troops to address unrest on distant colonies much more expensive and require constant supply runs for the garrisons of conquered planets.

I know with all the other changes going into 4.1 this is far from being on the burner, let alone out of the box, but just a thought for future versions.

I do agree that this would be more realistic than at the moment. My concern would be that the micromanagment aspect of supplying ground forces might outweigh the gameplay benefit. Perhaps a compromise might be a Replacement Division, a unit which is a lot cheaper than regular units but you would still have to transport it. As units takes casualties, they are replenished by reducing the strength of available replacement divisions. Less micromanagement required and no new supply system required but would still require players to think about replacing combat losses, or possibly even attrition due to long deployments.

Steve

[welchbloke]

Steve,

I've been thinking about the reality of placing a division of ground troops, or more, on a desolate moon colony as a garrison for years on end, and when they are finally moved to a forward area where they are needed for combat, their readiness is pretty much good to go.

To that end, how about some sort of supply consumable used by ground forces on planets that do not have colony populations above, say, five million.  This would be used to replenish readiness of a unit as it uses parts, ammo, and people in it's daily operations.  Say a division is deployed with the necessary equipment to operate for six months, but after that time it's readiness drops until it is no longer combat effective.  The supplies would be taken to the divisions by freighters, or troop transports, and would include the ability to provide replacements for soldiers lost due to combat, supplies used, etc.  They would be able to be stockpiled, to allow for long periods when the supplies may not be delivered (planetary blockade) and slowly be used up for every day, or five day, beyond six months that the unit is deployed.  

The real goal would be to provide a realistic approach to battle losses on a hostile planet and their subsequent replacement, bringing the unit's readiness back up after a series of battles.  This would also make using troops to address unrest on distant colonies much more expensive and require constant supply runs for the garrisons of conquered planets.

I know with all the other changes going into 4.1 this is far from being on the burner, let alone out of the box, but just a thought for future versions.

I do agree that this would be more realistic than at the moment. My concern would be that the micromanagment aspect of supplying ground forces might outweigh the gameplay benefit. Perhaps a compromise might be a Replacement Division, a unit which is a lot cheaper than regular units but you would still have to transport it. As units takes casualties, they are replenished by reducing the strength of available replacement divisions. Less micromanagement required and no new supply system required but would still require players to think about replacing combat losses, or possibly even attrition due to long deployments.

Steve

I like the idea of the Replacement Division, there is certainly historical precedence for this sort of thing.  During WWII replacement depots provided all the replacements for combat losses.  Personel would be sent to the depot and then fed into a division to replace combat losses.

[schroeam (OP)]

I do agree that this would be more realistic than at the moment. My concern would be that the micromanagment aspect of supplying ground forces might outweigh the gameplay benefit. Perhaps a compromise might be a Replacement Division, a unit which is a lot cheaper than regular units but you would still have to transport it. As units takes casualties, they are replenished by reducing the strength of available replacement divisions. Less micromanagement required and no new supply system required but would still require players to think about replacing combat losses, or possibly even attrition due to long deployments.

Steve

I like the idea of the Replacement Division, there is certainly historical precedence for this sort of thing.  During WWII replacement depots provided all the replacements for combat losses.  Personel would be sent to the depot and then fed into a division to replace combat losses.

I like the Replacement Division concept.  It ties the replenishment to the GFTC and doesn't add to the bottlenecked CF queue or take up valuable freighter capacity.

Adam.

[Steve Walmsley]

I have added Replacement Divisions to v4.1. From now on, any readiness losses can only be recovered by taking that readiness from Replacement Divisions in the same location. When the Replacement Division is reduced to zero readiness, it is removed from the game. Replacement Divisions cost 40 BP (as examples for comparison, build costs are 60 for Garrison, 100 for Mobile Infantry and 180 for Heavy Assault). They have zero attack strength and a defence multiplier of 0.05.

You can also convert existing divisions to replacement divisions using a new button on the pop window. This could be a full-strength garrison division for example when you need to replenish higher quality units. It could also be a low tech infantry or armour division, which will give you something to do with those divisions if you start with a pre-TNT race. You can also convert damaged divisions to replacement divisions but they will only have the readiness of the original formation. So if you had too few replacements and several low readiness divisions, you could convert one to a replacement division in order to improve the readiness of others. It is not an instant replacement though so in an ongoing combat situation, the divisions would be better fighting on as they are.

Because of the new replacement divisions, I have speeded up readiness recovery to 200 per year instead of 100, plus any commander bonus. This means that without a bonus, a division reduced to 50% readiness will require three months to get back to full strength (and will take 50% from the replacement division over that time). I am not sure if that is too slow so anyone more knowledgeable about the rate at which combat formations can absorb replacements, please speak up.

During a 5-day increment, replacements will be assigned to low-readiness units in the same order as used for command assignment (HQ, HVA, AST, INF, GAR, LTA, LTI, ENG)

Steve