C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve can I make a suggestion that defender fires first. This would lead more into the idea that an attack tends to take more losses and needs a higher ratio of troops to take the ground.

Also will you give the option to go guerrilla, this basically take away all heavy equipment and the attacker has a much harder time, completely destroying these units. The opposing force captures the planet. But what it allows is time for reinforcements to come back and these units reconstituted with experience if they survive.

Also steve, how long do you expect to say a 10 Division v 5 Division fight to last. 1 year or like it is now like 3 months, I would like to see longer fights, to give reinforcement and supply issues, a chance to influence the battle. And can there be a small trickle to the defenders from local population for reinforcements.

Defender firing first shouldn't be necessary. Fortifications will give a huge advantage to a well-established defender.

Length of fight is a very good question. A lot will depend on the base chance to hit before any modifications, plus the frequency of the ground combat phases. I would like to have combat phases more frequently then the construction phase, so that there is interaction with fighters and orbital fire support. I am leaning toward 5-10% for the base chance to hit. I need to run some scenarios to see how that turns out. I want to avoid the VB6 situation where it can take weeks to eliminate a massively outclassed defender, although if that defender has fortifications in good terrain it should take a while. However, I also want to allow for longer sieges where the sides are relatively evenly matched.

One formation type I am considering is guerrilla, where they do little damage but are difficult to kill and cause unrest.

[ardem]

Steve I think if you see my additions to my last post about frontage number it might kill two birds with on stone in regards to adding to the length of combat as well as the stack of doom beating defenders without adding length, stacks of dooms will always win, however its about adding length of time for the defender to get additional resource to the fight, before it is over.

[Steve Walmsley]

It is a good point about equating front line attack with fortification. While I looked upon the mechanic as a way of overcoming hostile fortification, I hadn't considered that was it effectively defensive as well, by creating more shots before being destroyed. I also agree that is actually makes sense to put everything on attack, which was my main concern. I guess the usefulness would be very dependent on just how critical supplies were. Probably too many unknown factors to commit to this path.

You are probably correct that I am adding more complexity than is really necessary . Perhaps I should change the concept of front-line attack (more attacks to try to beat back fortifications) to a more unit-specific capability. Some form of combat engineers perhaps that can reduce hostile fortification, although they will consume more supplies and attract fire while doing so.

Replying to my own points here

The original reason for having the Attack vs Defence option was to have some reason to come out of fortifications and attack. Is it sufficient that an attacker will be bereft of his own substantial fortifications (for a while anyway), although that wouldn't be true for two long-standing populations? If a post-invasion fight takes long enough, the attacker will settle down into his own fortifications as well. Or should there be some advantage to foregoing or giving up fortifications for some greater chance of damaging the enemy?

Perhaps attacking units (going back to the concept of Front-Line Attack vs Front-Line defence but without the extra attacks) have an chance to damage enemy fortifications, or perhaps if they cause sufficient damage they can cause enemy formations to lose morale or break (when that wouldn't be possible when fighting from their own fortifications).

Open to suggestion about a mechanic where coming out to attack has a useful advantage in certain situations.

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve I think if you see my additions to my last post about frontage number it might kill two birds with on stone in regards to adding to the length of combat as well as the stack of doom beating defenders without adding length, stacks of dooms will always win, however its about adding length of time for the defender to get additional resource to the fight, before it is over.

I already played around with this type of concept. The issue is too much variability in formation sizes. It would have to be a certain size of frontage rather than number of formations and then it becomes hard to match everything up, plus formations may change position and then everything gets recalculated.

With a weighted random assignment based on the sizes of the defending formations, a similar outcome should be achieved. If one side has absolutely overwhelming numbers, then it should be a relatively short fight anyway.

[Bremen]

Replying to my own points here

The original reason for having the Attack vs Defence option was to have some reason to come out of fortifications and attack. Is it sufficient that an attacker will be bereft of his own substantial fortifications (for a while anyway), although that wouldn't be true for two long-standing populations? If a post-invasion fight takes long enough, the attacker will settle down into his own fortifications as well. Or should there be some advantage to foregoing or giving up fortifications for some greater chance of damaging the enemy?

Perhaps attacking units (going back to the concept of Front-Line Attack vs Front-Line defence but without the extra attacks) have an chance to damage enemy fortifications, or perhaps if they cause sufficient damage they can cause enemy formations to lose morale or break (when that wouldn't be possible when fighting from their own fortifications).

Open to suggestion about a mechanic where coming out to attack has a useful advantage in certain situations.

I don't particularly have a problem with units never being forced to come out of their fortifications to attack. Though I suppose if you wanted to, you could make it so units not on attack would never hit rear echelon or support units. Then an attacker on a planet might want to set their units on attack in order to try to take out the Space to Orbit weaponry.

Alternately/additionally, units on the attack could have a chance to take territory. This could result in both reducing enemy fortification level and/or taking some fraction of the enemy's buildings and population. Then the defenders would have to eventually leave their fortifications to counter-attack if they wanted the stuff back.

If combat is at a relatively fast pace, and fortification can be lost (either in general, or when the enemy is on the attack), then that makes fortification act sort of like temporary bonus hitpoints. If you were to land 1000 infantry against 500 infantry with fortification 4, for instance, then after awhile you might have taken some territory and reduced their fortification to 1.5, but lost 600 troops doing it to their 200. At that point you'd probably want to cancel the attack and start fortifying yourself (maybe with those construction factories you captured!), or risk the enemy launching a counter attack on your weakened forces. Makes the fight a little more than just straight attrition, anyways

[MagusXIX]

Replying to my own points here

The original reason for having the Attack vs Defence option was to have some reason to come out of fortifications and attack. Is it sufficient that an attacker will be bereft of his own substantial fortifications (for a while anyway), although that wouldn't be true for two long-standing populations? If a post-invasion fight takes long enough, the attacker will settle down into his own fortifications as well. Or should there be some advantage to foregoing or giving up fortifications for some greater chance of damaging the enemy?

Perhaps attacking units (going back to the concept of Front-Line Attack vs Front-Line defence but without the extra attacks) have an chance to damage enemy fortifications, or perhaps if they cause sufficient damage they can cause enemy formations to lose morale or break (when that wouldn't be possible when fighting from their own fortifications).

Open to suggestion about a mechanic where coming out to attack has a useful advantage in certain situations.

I see two purposes for coming out from behind defenses. Infiltration (ie espionage/sabotage) and, more rarely, when you believe you can drive the besiegers off. I feel like intelligence should play a big part in whether to attack or not, and that certainty about who would win in a fight should be something to strive for and backed by mechanics of some sort.

I see it playing out that an invading army lands (or I've occupied long enough as an attacker.) I keep my ground forces hidden in their fortifications which makes it very difficult for the enemy to get a bead on exactly what and how much I have. Is recon a thing already? If not, I'd consider it. The time to come out and attack is when your military intelligence informs you that you've got a solid chance at actually winning the sortie.

Fog of war, combined with methods to clear the fog, should solve a lot more problems than it creates, especially with regard to knowing when and where to attack. If you're simply outclassed by a besieger, then it's just not a good idea to unhide and that's okay. Make your enemy fight for every inch and hope backup arrives, or surrender.

[DIT_grue]

Open to suggestion about a mechanic where coming out to attack has a useful advantage in certain situations.

I'll second the point that formations on the defensive are obviously not going to be penetrating enemy lines to savage their relatively vulnerable support or rear echelon forces. Some of the other suggestions are intriguing, but that one is the obvious starting point.

Speaking of that, one minor thing that I didn't notice being explicitly mentioned (although I suspect you would have noticed when you got to it if you haven't already): if a formation is set as Support or Rear Echelon and is attacked, any element of that formation with direct combat capability ought to be able to shoot back at the attackers. Otherwise there wouldn't be any much point in attaching a platoon of infantry to guard your headquarters/artillery park/whatever. Whether bombardment weapons tasked to support should also be able to target formations directly assaulting them is arguably messier, but leaving it to random chance would create enough variation to tell all the different possible stories - shelling their proper target even as they're overrun, turning the guns on a small band of skirmishers while the army bleeds on the fortifications they were tasked to suppress...

[Bremen]

Speaking of that, one minor thing that I didn't notice being explicitly mentioned (although I suspect you would have noticed when you got to it if you haven't already): if a formation is set as Support or Rear Echelon and is attacked, any element of that formation with direct combat capability ought to be able to shoot back at the attackers. Otherwise there wouldn't be any much point in attaching a platoon of infantry to guard your headquarters/artillery park/whatever. Whether bombardment weapons tasked to support should also be able to target formations directly assaulting them is arguably messier, but leaving it to random chance would create enough variation to tell all the different possible stories - shelling their proper target even as they're overrun, turning the guns on a small band of skirmishers while the army bleeds on the fortifications they were tasked to suppress...

While this would seem to make sense at first glance, it kind of messes with the implicit design detail that formations can be any size, and should function identically in combat regardless of size.

It's tricky to explain, but to give an example... let's say I have a bunch of front line units and some rear echelon formations with my STO weapons and such. Assume that the front line units mean each enemy formation has a 5% chance of attacking the rear formations.

Now, obviously the more formations the enemy has the more chances they have of hitting the 5% chance. But whether it's one enemy formation or 50 enemy formations, on average their weapons will be firing on the STO units 5% of the time. The enemy might think it was better to have 10 5% chances of doing 1 damage than 1 5% chance of doing 10 damage, but overall it isn't a huge difference

But if we assume the rear echelon formations can fire back at attackers, the reverse isn't true. If I have 5 formations in the rear, and one enemy formation hits the 5%, then one of those five formations returns fire. If I have 1 giant formation in the rear, and one enemy hits the 5%, then every single unit I have in the rear echelon gets the chance to return fire.

So it's probably better that rear echelon units can never return fire. If you want troops defending them, probably best to put them on the front line; this will both let them inflict casualties every round instead of just when they're attacked, and reduce the chance of enemy attackers actually hitting the rear echelon units.

[Borealis4x]

Sorry if this was answered before, but I gotta ask:

Is there going to be a "maximum rank" setting like there was a minimum rank setting on the ship design screen to keep admirals from piloting shuttles?

[Steve Walmsley]

Sorry if this was answered before, but I gotta ask:

Is there going to be a "maximum rank" setting like there was a minimum rank setting on the ship design screen to keep admirals from piloting shuttles?

Every class will now have a specific rank, rather than a range of ranks.

[Steve Walmsley]

Thanks for the suggestions on attack vs defence. I just wanted to point out that when I talked about coming out of the fortifications, I meant both sides, not just the defender. One of the things I haven't addressed yet is whether formations can fortify while in combat. With no benefit to an attack vs defence stance, it makes sense for an attacker to fortify, because then he gains defence without sacrificing offence and will eventually reach parity with defender. It shouldn't be the case that the constant best strategy for an invading force is to fortify. This is what I am trying to avoid by providing some benefit to attacking. I can address this by making it hard to fortify in combat, which means that fortifications will generally be a defender benefit, or find some reason for an attacker not to fortify in some cases, or perhaps a combination of both.

I agree it makes sense for only attacking formations to be able to reach defending support and rear echelon formations. It probably also makes sense to give them a chance to reduce enemy fortifications in some way.

Perhaps in terms of fortifying in combat, any formation not attacking should automatically fortify. However, the rate of fortification should be slowed when the formation suffers casualties.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'll second the point that formations on the defensive are obviously not going to be penetrating enemy lines to savage their relatively vulnerable support or rear echelon forces. Some of the other suggestions are intriguing, but that one is the obvious starting point.

Speaking of that, one minor thing that I didn't notice being explicitly mentioned (although I suspect you would have noticed when you got to it if you haven't already): if a formation is set as Support or Rear Echelon and is attacked, any element of that formation with direct combat capability ought to be able to shoot back at the attackers. Otherwise there wouldn't be any much point in attaching a platoon of infantry to guard your headquarters/artillery park/whatever. Whether bombardment weapons tasked to support should also be able to target formations directly assaulting them is arguably messier, but leaving it to random chance would create enough variation to tell all the different possible stories - shelling their proper target even as they're overrun, turning the guns on a small band of skirmishers while the army bleeds on the fortifications they were tasked to suppress...

While any troops attached to the support formation won't be able to fire back (for the reasons given by Bremen), they do provide some security because the attacker may attack them instead of the more valuable artillery. Target selection is based on element size, not cost, so infantry provide a cheap way of 'padding' the formation to reduce the chance that the more valuable units are attacked.

[TCD]

Thanks for the suggestions on attack vs defence. I just wanted to point out that when I talked about coming out of the fortifications, I meant both sides, not just the defender. One of the things I haven't addressed yet is whether formations can fortify while in combat. With no benefit to an attack vs defence stance, it makes sense for an attacker to fortify, because then he gains defence without sacrificing offence and will eventually reach parity with defender. It shouldn't be the case that the constant best strategy for an invading force is to fortify. This is what I am trying to avoid by providing some benefit to attacking. I can address this by making it hard to fortify in combat, which means that fortifications will generally be a defender benefit, or find some reason for an attacker not to fortify in some cases, or perhaps a combination of both.

I agree it makes sense for only attacking formations to be able to reach defending support and rear echelon formations. It probably also makes sense to give them a chance to reduce enemy fortifications in some way.

Perhaps in terms of fortifying in combat, any formation not attacking should automatically fortify. However, the rate of fortification should be slowed when the formation suffers casualties.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd just keep things simple. If you're on an attack order then you attack the enemy (using your stated targeting rules) but with no fortification bonus. If you're on defense then you get your fortification bonus but you simply don't get to attack. If both sides are set entirely on defence then no direct combat actually happens.

So the reason people have to commit troops to attack is that otherwise they won't achieve anything. An invader building fortifications will help against a counter assault but do nothing otherwise.

The only extra complication with this is for your support fire rules. You'd probably want to be able to use artillery against enemy trenches even if no front line troops are attacking. Perhaps undirected support units fire on a randomly targeted front line formation but with a much lower chance to hit (75% to hit penalty?)

[chrislocke2000]

A few thoughts:

- I don't see a reason to give attackers multipliers on the number of attacks v defenders. The motivation to select attack should be because the forces need to achieve the capture of the planet etc not because they get bonuses. Attackers should be at a disadvantage to dug in troops when being attacked directly so needing comparatively larger forces to do this makes sense.

- For fortified forces my view would be they simply can't attack but can just respond to attacks against them. If an attacker decides to fortify I would expect that to be because they need to wait for further forces to arrive, to conserve supplies or to leave it to the artillery in the support role to do more damage to the front line opposing forces before attacking and hence would not be attacking directly at that point.

- For those fortified forces I would have thought they need a mobilisation period depending on how well dug in they are to move from passive to active fighting. I'd expect that they would suffer penalties of some form whilst in that mobilisation period. The same would be true for those trying to dig in.

- Given the whole attacking planets piece is going to be key it would be nice to have some sort of beach head mechanics. Whether that would mean initial landing troops are in deployment phase with penalties as above for a period of time or some other mechanic would be good. Perhaps also have a state for a rear echelon unit that is beachhead and that controls supplies and rate of supplies drop. As with other rear echelon units if the opposing side breaks through they can damage the beach head and damage flow of maintenance etc. Finally on this the beachhead may limit the flow of maintenance so in large attacks you may need multiple beach heads and hence have more units initially exposed to that deployment phase in order to have enough supply lines.

- Finally on the aircraft position have you given any thoughts to giving forces an air cover status and having bonuses / penalties based on air cover level. Ie covered, contested, unprotected, air superiority. Aircraft should have specific orders to attack other aircraft, defend or attack surface to air units. Clearly if you loose air cover you should be at a penalty on deployment and also should allow better intel for the force with air superiority.

[Steve Walmsley]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd just keep things simple. If you're on an attack order then you attack the enemy (using your stated targeting rules) but with no fortification bonus. If you're on defense then you get your fortification bonus but you simply don't get to attack. If both sides are set entirely on defence then no direct combat actually happens.

So the reason people have to commit troops to attack is that otherwise they won't achieve anything. An invader building fortifications will help against a counter assault but do nothing otherwise.

The only extra complication with this is for your support fire rules. You'd probably want to be able to use artillery against enemy trenches even if no front line troops are attacking. Perhaps undirected support units fire on a randomly targeted front line formation but with a much lower chance to hit (75% to hit penalty?)

Originally, I wanted a situation where both sides on defence result in a low-intensity combat but once someone attacks it becomes more intense. There are issues with that approach though as highlighted by Bremen, because it becomes too advantageous to attack. Similarly, in a situation where defence means no firing, there is no disadvantage to attacking. One option though would be defence means no firing unless attacked, in which case you get to fire back. However, that leads to creating a few huge formations so your returning of fire becomes more effective. The solution needs to be size-independent. Also, a situation where defence means a lower chance to hit is the same as a situation where attacking increases the chance to hit.

This is turning out to be a trickier problem than I anticipated

I think leaving all front-line on same weight for targeting, regardless of attack or defence status, but allowing only attack to have a chance to damage support formations or fortifications (or perhaps morale) is probably fine. The strategic attacker can either use attack tactically to try to win more quickly, or fortify his own positions and fight a gradual war of attrition (or a combination of the two).