UlzogororthIn aggregate I think it doesn't actually matter for targeting what units you have in which front-line formations. Each formation draws fire proportionate to its size, and each element within it draws a share of that fire proportionate to its size - so in effect every unit draws fire proportionate to its size.
Loading up your front line with expendable tonnage does reduce the chance of the nicer bits getting hit, but only by making those nicer bits a smaller share of the lineup.
Making the APCs 'avoid combat' makes them draw less fire away from the other targets in your force. And it doesn't make them any harder to kill when they do draw fire, it just makes them less likely to be fired on at all.
(It sounds like you may be using 'APCs' for RP reasons, since there's no game mechanics involving vehicles transporting infantry. So maybe they're not actually units that you'd be using if you were only following the mechanics? At that point, giving them 'avoid combat' to keep them from eating wastefully heavy casualties might help...)
^This.
- This is what I intend to test. I'm not sure if the "Non-Combat" works at the aggregate level or not. I often have Small Logistics Units in my forces, which are typically Non-Combat. I began using the Non-Combat APCs as a way to increase the protection of them w/o increasing the chance they would get shot at in the first place. The Non-Combat APC is a 5-Ton Unit for the purposes of target selection, so adding one per two Small Logistics and four Small Logistics Units per formation gave me some supply grace while offering those supplies a 20% increase in survival rates. I used these mainly in Support / Rear Echelon formations at first to offer some protection to the supplies in case of a breakthrough. It seemed to work ok as far as I could tell, so I upgraded these "Support APCs" to front line work, but kept them as an escort for Small Logistics Units. Seemed to work ok, so I created a 2,000 Template around the concept, making that template need 250 GSP and have a 2,000 Ton Infantry HQ. In that one I upgraded the Small Logistics to a regular Infantry one, and that formation did very well indeed... at least against everything I felt it "should" do well against.
- These have been tested in situations designed around what they should be good against. A real combat situation will always be hairy-er than that by a mile. The goal is to design and test a variety of ground units designed for a variety of roles, then create a hierarchy of formations based off of these that is designed to bring them all together into a cohesive fighting force. That's where this test is going to come in. Ground Battles are decided by a combination of Superior Tech & Superior Numbers, which makes sense considering Aurora's focus on the Strategic level above all else. If, and that's a big
IF, these Support APCs lower the overall size of a formation for the purposes of targeting, that means I can use them as an elastic backline while my IFVs and MBTs do all the heavy lifting. These formations would have Fire Support elements attached to them, the Motorized have Medium AA and Light Bombardment units attached to them in a support formation. They also have Light Anti-Vehicle and Light Anti-Air teams contained within the Motorized Companies themselves.
- They're intended to give me more control over how and when things get shot at. The concept is three fold; The MBTs are my attack line, the Motorized is my elastic defense. I have cheap infantry formations to be assigned always to defense, but these are only about 1,500 Tons per formation, so the Motorized is stil the priority... or at least it should be. If not, then the whole concept falls apart. IFVs would then defend if I need to grind down the enemy, or attack if it can give me the advantage, they're a flex unit. With the Non-Combat APCs, the Motorized formation would be smaller than the IFV formation, so when using the IFVs on the defense they would take the priority over them. They're smaller than the Armored Companies though, so when used in the attack the armored will still attack first with the goal of creating breakthroughs that the IFVs could exploit.
- Now I still have no idea if this actually
works or not. I do know that those Support APCs
do work when used to defend Small Logistics, and they work quite well at that. I also know that if you mix your APCs into your MBTs, which I have done often, that these Support APCs work well with infantry. I'm not going to argue that they are better in protecting than regular APCs, because they aren't. Combat APCs are indeed 5x better at that role than Non-Combat ones. What the Support APCs are good at is making sure that when you have bigger, harder, beefier targets to shoot at that neither the APCs
or the infantry get shot at. What makes the Support APCs so good at this is that when they are made Non-Combat they get a target size reduction of 80%, which with a CAP makes them 5-Tons or the equivalent of 1x PW Infantry. Having four of those PW Infantry per Support APC gives you Infantry with 20% better rate of survival, all in a 25-Ton package, so my 62 ton MBTs will end up getting shot at twice as much as the APCs and Infantry combined.
It's not the best for everything, but I mentioned it here because it seemed promising.
However, OP asked about Bombardment units, not Non-Combat in general. If you would like to continue this discussion I would request you create a separate thread. I'm really not invested enough to do so myself as the concept, while thus far promising, lacks any real battle experience... so I don't want to spend too much time expounding on the idea if it turns out not to work for some reason. It should... but then again, lots of things in Aurora
should work, but for one reason or another end up not working.