Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Bureau of Design => Topic started by: hostergaard on July 26, 2022, 04:50:46 AM
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I don't have much experience with doing ground units so I am looking for some critique and reviews of this design I have made here. I basically followed the advice in these two threads:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11795.0
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11994.0
(https://i.imgur.com/34XOH2D.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/umCLZtD.png)
Artillery Company
Transport Size: 3,121 tons
Build Cost: 189.9 BP
2x HQ Emplacment Company
40x Artillery Emplacement Defender Class
2x AA Emplacement Cerub Class
8x Resupply Infantry
1x Supply Truck
2x Anti Vehicle Emplacement Fortress Class
34x Space Marine
Boarding Space Marine Platoon
Transport Size: 499 tons
Build Cost: 124.8 BP
1x Boarding Space Marine HQ500
5x Boarding Terminator Space Marine
143x Boarding Light Space Marine
Boarding Space Marine Platoon HQ
Transport Size: 100 tons
Build Cost: 25 BP
1x Boarding Space Marine HQ500
4x Boarding Terminator Space Marine
14x Boarding Light Space Marine
Boarding Space Marine Squad
Transport Size: 100 tons
Build Cost: 23 BP
14x Boarding Light Space Marine
4x Boarding Terminator Space Marine
1x Boarding Light Space Marine HQ100
Catalan Battle Company
Transport Size: 3,125 tons
Build Cost: 313.6 BP
2x Catalan Command Company
50x Catalan Heavy Machine Gun Team
50x Catalan Bazooka Team
2x Catalan Supply Team
199x Catalan Space Marine
Catalan Defense Company
Transport Size: 3,123 tons
Build Cost: 202 BP
2x Catalan Supply Team
2x Catalan Command Company
40x Catalan Bazooka Team
192x Catalan Commando
40x Catalan Heavy Machine Gun Team
10x Catalan Mortar Team
10x Catalan SAM Team
Command Battalion
Transport Size: 3,125 tons
Build Cost: 174.4 BP
2x HQ Emplacment Battalion
5x AA Emplacement Angle Class
7x Artillery Emplacement Guardian Class
14x Space Marine
25x Supply Truck
2x Supply Infantery
1x Space Marine Recon
1x Construction Vehicles
Command Brigade
Transport Size: 12,500 tons
Build Cost: 753.6 BP
3x HQ Emplacment Brigade
37x Space Marine
4x Construction Vehicles
4x Supply Infantery
90x Supply Truck
30x AA Emplacement Angle Class
30x Artillery Emplacement Guardian Class
2x Space Marine Recon
GeoSurvey Troop
Transport Size: 1,000 tons
Build Cost: 40.4 BP
4x GeoSurvey Trucks
1x GeoSurvey Troop HQ
Space Marine Company
Transport Size: 3,125 tons
Build Cost: 312.2 BP
2x Space Marine Company Leader
70x Space Marine Destroyer
152x Space Marine
45x Space Marine Terminator
1x Supply Truck
2x Supply Heavy Infantery
Titan Battle Company
Transport Size: 3,120 tons
Build Cost: 664.2 BP
5x Titan Emperor Class
7x Supply Heavy Infantery
1x HQ Emplacment Company
1x Supply Truck
So the overall strategy here is when invading planets I go with the Titan group as the front line attackers, they outgun everything and armored up the ass so their mission is simply to go the front line and frakk smeg up and be a pain in the ass for the enemy. The space marines are the front line defense there to make sure nothing escape the marauding titans and gets to the supporters and rear echelon. Then I got a smegload of artillery in support, they are actually the main movers and shakers, well not movers since they are static, but certainly shakers. The titans are actually just a distraction, the artillery is actually what will do most of the damage safely in the back. I threw in a two static heavy anti vehicle and bunch of marines to guard cause I heard that sometimes they might find themselves on the front line. And two static AA cause why not, figured I should not leave them entirely defenseless. Then in the rear echelon we have the headquarters with construction, plenty of heavy AA and artillery and boatloads of supply and a FFD. I don't know why I set up all units with supply trucks and supply infantry. Just for RP I guess, that every group have a truck for it at least, but maybe it works bad?. I hear supply infantry only support their own group, but trucks can go to other trucks? I set it up so the supply infantry have exactly one load for their own group and the rest in trucks so it can ship of to other groups if need be, will that work like that? Well except the titan group, where I just filled it with supply, I guess I could have thrown some space marines in there or something, but I kinda want the battle units in that group to be nearly untouchable, figured they would only die and cause loss in morale.
Have I set it up correctly in order of battle? Everything supporting the Titan group, even the Command Battalion? What should I do with the Command brigade? I cant set it to support two groups. Is it actually necessary?
Now, some things I have been thinking of, part of me wanted to go with Titan based HQ for the titan squad for RP but then I would either have them risk combat or be non combat but waste 3 slots on them with CAP or something. I was considering going with a space marine infantery HQ but the whole image of a single dude running around on the ground ordering giant titans around seemed a bit funny and silly so I went with static HQ. Any recommendations? I also went with AA and artillery in support and rear echelon only cause it seemed a waste to have in in the front line defense and attack where its likely to see and be destroyed by combat.
The Catalan groups are for planetary defense, they are my garrisons. I like to terraform planets I need to defend into jungle planets, and prefer Jungle Mountain which is what they specialize in. The idea is that they should be basically untouchable as infantry on jungle mountain planets and will frakk invaders due to their specialization. I went with infantry since I can specialize them for jungle mountains, but are vehicles better for defense of non jungle mountains? I might have to design something else for earth that will work better without jungle mountains. You will note that my catalan Front line defenders have some AA and artillery, figured because of how unlikely enemies are to hit anything they would work just fine. Tough, I am wondering if having a battle group is wise? There is something about them loosing their fortification of the front line, so maybe they loose the benefit of being on a jungle planet? Maybe I should go with either two artillery groups in support of the front line defence? Or go with two front line defense Catalans and split the artillery in two halves and have each half supporting each front line defense? And maybe I should design a specialized Catalan headquarters for the rear echelon or does it not matter?
And of course my boarding squads of some CAP cause it have the highest shot per ton ratio. Should I add some logistics to them? I hear combat does not last long enough for that.
Also, I am thinking I might inflate the sizes as my empire grows, so sooner or later the base size is 12500 instead of 3125. Comments? Figured 3125 was good for letting my majors have some action. That reminds me, the command brigade is Colonel level not BG level. Third level that is.
Would love to hear some comments and critique, gonna test it out on some space assholes some robots guarding a planet I found
Edit: A few minor issues in number of troops in various formations. Fixed!
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So, the first and most important issue you're going to run into - your base formations (3,125 tons) are way too small. You will need millions of tons of ground units to invade an NPR home world, possibly even tens of millions. This is a problem of micromanagement - imagine trying to manage over a thousand of these companies to transport, organize, etc. - and also a problem of commanders as you will struggle to generate enough ground force commanders to effectively command your forces. Do you need a commander for every formation? Well, no... but if you could just build fewer, larger formations and then you would have enough leaders, why wouldn't you do so to get the most benefit from your commanders than you can? Generally in 1.13 and earlier versions you should design your ground unit hierarchy based on your commanders (i.e., 3:1 ratio of ranks if you use auto-promotions). In 2.0 and future versions we will have on-demand promotions and you can do whatever you want.
I generally recommend formations in the 10,000-25,000 ton range depending on your roleplay and other factors. 15,000 and 20,000 ton breakpoints both work well as long as you adjust your transport capacities accordingly, and I personally like 12,500 tons as you can fit two units into 25,000 tons of transport space and it matches the size of old VB6 brigades which is fun.
About the actual ground units:
Artillery Company
Transport Size: 3,121 tons
Build Cost: 189.9 BP
2x HQ Emplacment Company
40x Artillery Emplacement Defender Class
2x AA Emplacement Cerub Class
8x Resupply Infantry
1x Supply Truck
2x Anti Vehicle Emplacement Fortress Class
34x Space Marine
Using 2x HQs is not really worth doing. It does not confer any net bonus for commander survivability (if you math it out, commander survivability decreases albeit very slightly).
There is no mechanical benefit to using front-line weapons (PW, MAV, etc.) in a support or rear echelon formation, as they will be unable to fire. No, they do not fire in defense if the formation is attacked, there is no provision in the ground combat rules for such return fire. If you want them for RP reasons that's fine, just be aware that they contribute nothing.
If you are playing a single-player campaign, note that NPRs do not use ground support fighters, so AA weapons are unnecessary except for RP reasons. Personally, I use them anyways, but only for RP reasons.
There isn't any good reason to use both INF and LVH supply units in the same formation. I will make more notes about the supply mechanics below but I would pick one or the other. If your artillery formations are also used for mid-level HQs then having both types could be okay (but still see below).
Boarding Space Marines
These look fine, although you only need one type of formation. Note that there's not really any reason to organize boarding marines into a command hierarchy, so you don't need separate HQ and line platoons for instance.
Catalan Companies
These look fine, just undersized and with the same issues I mentioned under the artillery company about the HQ and supply elements. I don't see any purpose in having two different formations here so I would recommend just picking one to simplify logistics/micromanagement.
Command Brigade
Same comments as for the artillery company.
A word about supply logistics: There are two ways to do it, and both work differently and have different pros/cons (with one pretty clearly superior at present):
- INF Logistics: These do not automatically resupply subordinate formations in a hierarchy. However, if you include INF+LOG units in every formation, they can reinforce from rear area supply dumps using the Unit Series/Replacement functionality added in 1.12 as units are lost or consumed during combat. This is significantly more BP-efficient than LVH logistics, at a cost of 1.0 BP per 500 GSP, so the only real downside is that some amount of your front line formations (5-10% usually) will be composed of these noncombat units, which isn't much of a problem.
- LVH Logistics: These will automatically resupply subordinate formations in a hierarchy, and take priority over organic resupply (i.e., if a formation can draw supply from a HQ formation with LVH+LOG, it will do so even if it has its own logistics units as well). However, due to the size and armor of the LVH type, the cost is 2.48 BP per 500 GSP so it is hugely inefficient to use LVH logistics. Prior to 1.12, LVH were necessary for large forces just due to the micromanagement of INF logistics; however, since Unit Series/Replacement was added in 1.12 INF logistics are equally easy to use, so there is no upside to LVH logistics.
Because of this, in my own DB I modify the ground unit components so that LVH logistics provide 1000 GSP per unit rather than 500, which is a much better balance. However, for the purposes of this thread my point is (1) to recommend using only INF or LVH logistics, not both, or to use INF logistics in combat formations and LVH in rear areas formations but not to mix both types for frontline formations; and (2) to recommend the use of INF logistics if you care about the optimal method.
So the overall strategy here is when invading planets I go with the Titan group as the front line attackers, they outgun everything and armored up the ass so their mission is simply to go the front line and frakk smeg up and be a pain in the ass for the enemy. The space marines are the front line defense there to make sure nothing escape the marauding titans and gets to the supporters and rear echelon.
This is a nice headcanon, but not really how the actual ground combat mechanics work in Aurora. Aurora has no real concept of units escaping, flanking, etc. aside from changing the echelon/position (front/support/rear) of a formation which cannot be affected by combat (it is just choosing from the drop-down menu and happens instantly). There are breakthroughs in some cases, but these represent basically an additional attack role by some formations, not a tactical flanking attack (hence, no defensive fire if an artillery company is attacked).
In general, it is best to think of Aurora ground combat as operational rather than tactical. You can of course imagine whatever you like tactically, but the mechanics are purely operational - Formation A fires at Formation B and does damage, combat phase over. I emphasize this mainly because I often see players design their forces based on what they imagine could happen, rather than what actually can or will happen.
Then I got a smegload of artillery in support, they are actually the main movers and shakers, well not movers since they are static, but certainly static. The titans are actually just a distraction, the artillery is actually what will do most of the damage safely in the back.
This is...true, but a huge waste of the Titans. Artillery are, frankly, underpowered in Aurora due to the mechanics as you don't have a WWI situation where the infantry hide behind fortifications while the artillery bombs them, in Aurora all the formations engage every round if they are able which means front line formations deal a lot of damage. The advantage of artillery is that you can hide its heavy firepower behind the front line so it will not be targeted, so artillery is strong not because it is deadly but because it is hard to target/kill and can therefore last for a long time while the infantry and tanks die. Point being, it is beneficial for you to make your front line units strong as well and not rely on artillery to do all the work.
The Titans themselves are...really bad. UHV+4xSHAV is bad. The SHAV will rarely be necessary, as NPR armies tend to be infantry-heavy, and even if the enemy does deploy super-heavy armor you have no way to control what your Titans shoot at - a lot of those very expensive SHAV shots will be used to massively overkill a basic unarmored rifleman instead of an enemy super-heavy tank. And SHAV is expensive, not only in size (which limits how many Titans you can bring per ton or BP) but also in supply usage (81 GSP per ten shots!!!). It would be much, much, much, much better to use CAP, HCAP, or some flavor of autocannon as the main weapon and use these to mow down infantry. Then you can have artillery and a limited number of anti-tank weapons which can eliminate enemy heavy armor which is left over.
As an aside, "Static" doesn't mean fixed fortifications, it just means something heavier and not mechanized. For example, STA+MB can represent a towed artillery piece. This is a common misconception.
Have I set it up correctly in order of battle? Everything supporting the Titan group, even the Command Battalion? What should I do with the Command brigade? I cant set it to support two groups. Is it actually necessary?
I think it looks fine. It's more common to see the artillery included in the command formation with 3x subordinate line formations but that's certainly not a requirement.
One formation can only support one other formation. This is not a problem, either way the full weight of fire will be thrown downrange, it only affects targeting which is at large scale unimportant. Usually I would have my artillery support the most powerful offensive unit in the formation, to maximize the chance of a breakthrough.
Now, some things I have been thinking of, part of me wanted to go with Titan based HQ for the titan squad for RP but then I would either have them risk combat or be non combat but waste 3 slots on them with CAP or something. I was considering going with a space marine infantery HQ but the whole image of a single dude running around on the ground ordering giant titans around seemed a bit funny and silly so I went with static HQ. Any recommendations? I also went with AA and artillery in support and rear echelon only cause it seemed a waste to have in in the front line defense and attack where its likely to see and be destroyed by combat.
For the Titan HQ, either is fine.
I usually use Static HQ rather than Infantry, because for +12 tons you gain 3x HP which means 9x improvement in surviving any hits from smaller arms fire. Note that armor is rarely useful for Static HQs as it's not very cost-effective on the grand scale of things, since HQs are so much more expensive than regular units especially above HQ50.
The Catalan groups are for planetary defense, they are my garrisons. I like to terraform planets I need to defend into jungle planets, and prefer Jungle Mountain which is what they specialize in. The idea is that they should be basically untouchable as infantry on jungle mountain planets and will frakk invaders due to their specialization. I went with infantry since I can specialize them for jungle mountains, but are vehicles better for defense of non jungle mountains? I might have to design something else for earth that will work better without jungle mountains. You will note that my catalan Front line defenders have some AA and artillery, figured because of how unlikely enemies are to hit anything they would work just fine. Tough, I am wondering if having a battle group is wise? There is something about them loosing their fortification of the front line, so maybe they loose the benefit of being on a jungle planet? Maybe I should go with either two artillery groups in support of the front line defence? Or go with two front line defense Catalans and split the artillery in two halves and have each half supporting each front line defense? And maybe I should design a specialized Catalan headquarters for the rear echelon or does it not matter?
In general, INF/STA are the best for defense and vehicles are the best for offense (infantry is okay for offense as well). This is because INF/STA can fortify to the maximum level which is critical for the defender's advantage in combat. For offense, you will not have fortification in most cases, so vehicles are optimal for their evasion, heavy armor, and breakthrough ability. Note that Front Line Attack position gives up any fortification benefit in exchange for the ability to cause breakthroughs, while Front Line Defense position allows fortification but not breakthrough (this is the only difference - units in either Front Line position will fire at enemy units equally well otherwise).
And of course my boarding squads of some CAP cause it have the highest shot per ton ratio. Should I add some logistics to them? I hear combat does not last long enough for that.
No, because boarding combat has special rules and supply is not consumed at all.
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Yeah, what I tend to do now for micromanagement sanity sake but to still make ground troop sizes fit to some kind of sensible convention for RP-purposes is to make singular larger formations but then name my units to represent squads, exception is infantry units and Large+ Vehicles which represent individual soldiers.
So my battalions would look something like:
Assault Battalion
Transport Size: 16,000 tons
1x HQ 40k
10x Long Range Artillery Squad (So roughly simulating 100 soldiers)
<Rest filled with supply light vehicles and construction vehicles)
Then each Battalion will have 3 companies of 8k tons might look something like:
Artillery Company
Transport Size: 8,000 tons
1x HQ 8k
5x Heavy Emplacement Artillery Squad (Approx 50 soldiers)
5x Long Range Emplacement Artillery Squad (Approx 50 soldiers)
<Enough infantry supply units for 4-5 rounds, small number of construction vehicles, any left over to hit the 8k target is filled with light infantry>
Heavy Infantry Assault Company
Transport Size: 8,000 tons
1x HQ 8k
100x Heavy Infantry
80x Anti-Vehicle Infantry
<Enough infantry supply units for 4-5 rounds, any left over size filled with what fits the theme>
Armoured Assault Company
Transport Size: 8,000 tons
1x HQ 8k
10x Heavy Anti-Armor Mech
15x Light Anti-Armor Mech Squad (Approx 150 soldiers/units)
5x Medium Anti-Armor Mech Squad (Approx 50 soldiers/units)
<Rest filled with 4-5 rounds of supplies>
So in total each Battalion approximates around 600-650 combat troops, then a additional 100-150 bodies or so to represent managing support/logistics assets with a total transport requirement of 40,000 tons which can easily fit into a singular troop transport.
(For assault formations at least. Garrison formations introduce construction teams on the company level and scale down combat troops)
It's not a perfect scale but after dozens upon dozens of campaigns, tech upgrades and managing larger armies it's one that allows me to remain sane and not bogged down with micromanaging to much organisation structure.
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I generally make my units in either regiment or battalion sizes, depending on if it is the regular army, garrisons or elite troops. So regular army are pretty much regimental in strength... I will need to put some regimental support units in the larger HQ structure, such as artillery.
I find that breaking units down to company level just become very tedious very fast, even at battalion level I often find it tedious to some degree, but I also often play multiple factions and doing this for four five or more factions in a game can just be insane... ;)
If the overall unit strength is a Brigade I use Battalions, it the overall unit size is a division I go with regiments. Some units are just more independent and those can be anything from company to regiment sized, such as marines or colonial garrisons.
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What size are you calling a regiment or battalion, Jorgen? I suspect that my regiments are different in size to other people's.
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What size are you calling a regiment or battalion, Jorgen? I suspect that my regiments are different in size to other people's.
I would say roughly equivalent to real life Battalion and Regiments, otherwise I would not state that as most people know roughly what size such forces are. A regiment would be about 1-2000 personnel and battalions about 400-1000 personnel. I envision that the combat units in my games follow the same pattern as real life formations as they are the size they are for a reason.
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I understand personnel sizes for battalions and the like, but I am not talking about that. I am asking about tonnage. The reason I ask is because the tonnage of a VEH (or worse HVH) is considerable compared to infantry. If you design a company to be 8000 tons, you can only squeeze so many tanks in there, even if your PW infantry can meet a company's personnel size. This would defeat the personnel size head canon even if you assume 10 soldiers per VEH (which are commonly 80+ tons vs PW infantry being 5 tons).
Do you custom build your HQ tonnage to have similar personnel quantities when it comes to vehicles?
The OP seems to use 8000 tons for a company, which seems reasonable. What about others?
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Keep in mind there's about 5? 10? Rounds of combat supply included.
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I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
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Thanks for this excellent and detailed response. Yeah, I tested the squad against a planet with a small group of centurions and whatnot guarding it and my titans certainly completely obliterated anything they met, it just got deleted from existence. I played this game for near a decade but funnily enough never really got around to ground combat. I lack the experience to evaluate how common various enemies are, how heavily armored they are and so on.
Would changing the titans to 3xHCAP and a autocannon work well? Or should I just go full HCAP and have a single unit or two of Emperor titans to deal with heavy armor? I am not totally sure how armor works, does it work like ship where it slowly stripped away, or is it, either you have enough armor penetration to get trough the armor or you don't and your units can do nothing? Or is more of a percentage chance thing? Its kinda important since if its a all or nothing thing then I need to have something that can penetrate any armor I meet. If its a strip away thing or percentage chance. Well, then I can just use the most efficient thing and go for volume of fire instead. And what is the heaviest armor I am likely to meet anyway?
Also, I don't think I fully understand how supply works, does the entire unit just vanish after their supply points are spent? And if I do the INF thing, how do I do that? set it to support and replace? It seems that the vehicle supply is not completely pointless?
And yeah, I guess I will upscale the unit standard to 12,500 I suppose and maybe even further to 50 000 if it proves neccesary. I will probably keep a few smaller formation for the purpose of small fast ships dropping a vanguard on planets that have a lot of STO.
I went with the two Catalans to have one for front line attack and one for defense, but maybe having attacking units while defending a planet is pointless?
I am gonna go work out some better units, and post them so other can be inspired. I want to work out something that is easy to understand and replicate, have maybe a small RP value and also efficient.
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Thanks for your examples, I will take them into consideration too!
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3xHCAP and 1xMAC would work wonders. Remember that actual armour depends on their general armour rating as well as their unit class.
Supply unit vanishes when its supplies are consumed - in a sense, the combat units consume the supply units. But it's not a binary thing, there's a chance that a supply unit survives.
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Would changing the titans to 3xHCAP and a autocannon work well? Or should I just go full HCAP and have a single unit or two of Emperor titans to deal with heavy armor?
Either approach is fine. As long as the overall balance of firepower is a suitable match for your opponent you can divide weapons among units however you like. One advantage of separate unit types is that you can drop 4xHCAP Titans in the initial wave of landings, gain intelligence on the enemy, and then choose what following waves look like based on that intelligence.
I am not totally sure how armor works, does it work like ship where it slowly stripped away, or is it, either you have enough armor penetration to get trough the armor or you don't and your units can do nothing? Or is more of a percentage chance thing? Its kinda important since if its a all or nothing thing then I need to have something that can penetrate any armor I meet. If its a strip away thing or percentage chance. Well, then I can just use the most efficient thing and go for volume of fire instead. And what is the heaviest armor I am likely to meet anyway?
Both armor and HP work on a quadratic scale, that is, the chance of penetrating armor is (Piercing / Armor)^2 and if you penetrate then you have a chance of killing the unit based on (Attack / Hitpoints)^2. Since attack/piercing and hitpoints/armor both depend on the same racial tech level, this means technology has roughly a fourth-power effect on combat effectiveness, making tech level a dominant consideration.
In my experience you're not likely to meet better than medium armor (4*tech level), which is why MAC/HAC are actually quite good since they have a reasonable chance to penetrate and still have 3x shots against infantry so are good in both cases. However with high-tech NPRs or spoilers you may run into something unexpected.
Also, I don't think I fully understand how supply works, does the entire unit just vanish after their supply points are spent?
Yes.
And if I do the INF thing, how do I do that? set it to support and replace? It seems that the vehicle supply is not completely pointless?
Use the unit series replacement features added in 1.12 check the changelog for that version if you're not sure how to do this). Unit replacement works on a body/colony basis, so your replacement formations can be out of the hierarchy and just chilling in the rear echelon for maximum safety.
And yeah, I guess I will upscale the unit standard to 12,500 I suppose and maybe even further to 50 000 if it proves neccesary. I will probably keep a few smaller formation for the purpose of small fast ships dropping a vanguard on planets that have a lot of STO.
Note that you need to have transports capable of transporting your base formation size. If you want to use a base size of 50,000, any transports with less than that, e.g., 25,000 tons capacity, will not be able to transport those formations. Since 25,000 tons is a pretty standard transport size (for interbuild with freighter classes), I usually wouldn't recommend a base formation size larger than 25,000 tons.
I went with the two Catalans to have one for front line attack and one for defense, but maybe having attacking units while defending a planet is pointless?
It's not pointless, because breakthroughs can be very effective, but I would probably have them be in defensive stance to benefit from fortification. I would only switch to Front Line Attack stance when invading a planet, as you will not have any fortification in that case so the evasion + breakthrough mechanics will give more immediate benefit.
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I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
Yes... this is how I calculate the numbers in my units... allot of people in military units is not even combat personnel. Every soldier and vehicle need support as well, so the numbers I calculate for "personnel" is not just the number of soldiers. Vehicle obviously include mechanics, crew and support of that crew. Support units sort of also represent crew, so they are part of the military organisation. In general I include some supplies in all units as then count that as the support staff of the units.
A light vehicle would probably be at least five people including the crew, heavier vehicle a few more... after this I can get the true personnel in my formations including the combat personnel.
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I understand personnel sizes for battalions and the like, but I am not talking about that. I am asking about tonnage. The reason I ask is because the tonnage of a VEH (or worse HVH) is considerable compared to infantry. If you design a company to be 8000 tons, you can only squeeze so many tanks in there, even if your PW infantry can meet a company's personnel size. This would defeat the personnel size head canon even if you assume 10 soldiers per VEH (which are commonly 80+ tons vs PW infantry being 5 tons).
Do you custom build your HQ tonnage to have similar personnel quantities when it comes to vehicles?
The OP seems to use 8000 tons for a company, which seems reasonable. What about others?
This really depends... but this is more role-play that being optimal in my games. I just build the units the way they look good and then I design a regiment, battalion HQ that fits the needs. So most formations will not always fill up their HQ entirely... this also give me opportunity to add extra units into them based on needs later on. I simply don't find the need to have everything fit a certain amount of tons and you really don't need to do that.
The only units that I will need to take some care to design into a certain space are my marine forces as they are suppose to be permanently stationed on their assault carriers. These are the elites of the elites and very expensive forces in comparison with the regular army. All other forces are normally stationed on planets and ferried in normal cheap troop carriers, their size is almost irrelevant and don't have any dedicated troop carriers.
If there is any invasion plans of any sizeable planet I likely will have to build carriers for that specific purpose, so the carriers will be tailored after the troops not the other way around.
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When playing multi-faction games really heavy vehicles is quite tricky to use... they generally pay WAY too much for survivability for the firepower they put out. When they are up against light units that have some heavy anti-tank weapons sprinkled about they will struggle, they must be supported by lighter forces as well, most of the time. Just a bunch of cheap Static Heavy Anti-vehicle units will wreak havoc on any super heavy vehicles in the opposing side, especially of they have a small advantage in weapon tech over your armour tech. Plasma weapons also seem common in my games for the cheap ground weapon tech advantage, so heavy vehicle can be of dubious use if too numerous.
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I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
Actually, for modern tanks the crew is usually responsible for the daily maintenance of the vehicle - this is one reason why the M1 Abrams uses four crewmen with a dedicated loader as opposed to the three-man crew with an autoloader that some other countries (Russia...) uses - the fourth man makes maintenance a lot easier especially for such a complex design as the Abrams. You do of course have prodigious support personnel including workshop elements but these are held at a higher level, battalion or higher.
Yes... this is how I calculate the numbers in my units... allot of people in military units is not even combat personnel. Every soldier and vehicle need support as well, so the numbers I calculate for "personnel" is not just the number of soldiers. Vehicle obviously include mechanics, crew and support of that crew. Support units sort of also represent crew, so they are part of the military organisation. In general I include some supplies in all units as then count that as the support staff of the units.
A light vehicle would probably be at least five people including the crew, heavier vehicle a few more... after this I can get the true personnel in my formations including the combat personnel.
I usually achieve fairly accurate troop counts when using INF logistics units by considering them to have some number of soldiers (usually 4 works well for the 10-ton units). This works for the first few levels of command, but higher commands which in real life would just be very expansive command and specialized elements (e.g., SIGINT, EWAR) are not modeled in Aurora.
When playing multi-faction games really heavy vehicles is quite tricky to use... they generally pay WAY too much for survivability for the firepower they put out. When they are up against light units that have some heavy anti-tank weapons sprinkled about they will struggle, they must be supported by lighter forces as well, most of the time. Just a bunch of cheap Static Heavy Anti-vehicle units will wreak havoc on any super heavy vehicles in the opposing side, especially of they have a small advantage in weapon tech over your armour tech. Plasma weapons also seem common in my games for the cheap ground weapon tech advantage, so heavy vehicle can be of dubious use if too numerous.
I think HVH are fine if you don't over-armor them, the extra 18 tons comes with a 50% HP boost and with just medium armor they are not too expensive...if you put the heaviest weapons in your army on them (each tank is 100+ tons) the lost tonnage efficiency is not critical at all. That being said, I think the main use of HVH in a multi-faction game is to force the opponent to deploy a counter, as with real life the arms race is as much or more about perception of threat than actual threat.
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I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
Actually, for modern tanks the crew is usually responsible for the daily maintenance of the vehicle - this is one reason why the M1 Abrams uses four crewmen with a dedicated loader as opposed to the three-man crew with an autoloader that some other countries (Russia...) uses - the fourth man makes maintenance a lot easier especially for such a complex design as the Abrams. You do of course have prodigious support personnel including workshop elements but these are held at a higher level, battalion or higher.
Yes... this is how I calculate the numbers in my units... allot of people in military units is not even combat personnel. Every soldier and vehicle need support as well, so the numbers I calculate for "personnel" is not just the number of soldiers. Vehicle obviously include mechanics, crew and support of that crew. Support units sort of also represent crew, so they are part of the military organisation. In general I include some supplies in all units as then count that as the support staff of the units.
A light vehicle would probably be at least five people including the crew, heavier vehicle a few more... after this I can get the true personnel in my formations including the combat personnel.
I usually achieve fairly accurate troop counts when using INF logistics units by considering them to have some number of soldiers (usually 4 works well for the 10-ton units). This works for the first few levels of command, but higher commands which in real life would just be very expansive command and specialized elements (e.g., SIGINT, EWAR) are not modeled in Aurora.
When playing multi-faction games really heavy vehicles is quite tricky to use... they generally pay WAY too much for survivability for the firepower they put out. When they are up against light units that have some heavy anti-tank weapons sprinkled about they will struggle, they must be supported by lighter forces as well, most of the time. Just a bunch of cheap Static Heavy Anti-vehicle units will wreak havoc on any super heavy vehicles in the opposing side, especially of they have a small advantage in weapon tech over your armour tech. Plasma weapons also seem common in my games for the cheap ground weapon tech advantage, so heavy vehicle can be of dubious use if too numerous.
I think HVH are fine if you don't over-armor them, the extra 18 tons comes with a 50% HP boost and with just medium armor they are not too expensive...if you put the heaviest weapons in your army on them (each tank is 100+ tons) the lost tonnage efficiency is not critical at all. That being said, I think the main use of HVH in a multi-faction game is to force the opponent to deploy a counter, as with real life the arms race is as much or more about perception of threat than actual threat.
Yes... I agree... I usually count about three personnel for a light vehicle, four for a medium and five for a heavy for example. I count two for a crew served AP weapon team and three for a heavy one for example. I also have about five people for an Infantry with a 10ton logistics module. HQ units varies depending on the level, so from 10 people for a company to several hundred for a division. Most of the special troop types I just consider part of the HQ structure. I always have at least two HQ units in every formation. Logistics units I always have enough to supply all the units in its formation once, that seems to give realistic numbers of personnel to my formations.
The smallest units normally are battalions, some special units can come in companies... but those are specialist units such as Anti-tank, artillery, special forces units or the like... units that usually belong to higher echelon HQ.
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Alright, I mostly upscaled all my formations to 12500 base size.
Command Brigade
Transport Size: 12,496 tons
Build Cost: 426.2 BP
2x HQ Emplacment Brigade
8x Construction Vehicles
100x Supply Infantery
3x Space Marine Recon
59x Artillery Emplacement Warden Class
The command Brigade. Since we got space to spare, why not two HQ (Size 50000)? Construction, lots of supply, 3 FFD and 56 HB to shell whatever.
Artillery Battalion
Transport Size: 12,475 tons
Build Cost: 679.7 BP
1x HQ Emplacment Battalion
40x Supply Infantery
200x Artillery Emplacement Defender Class
The support artillery formation. Lots of MB and bucketloads of supply. Wasn't sure how much supply to add, so this is what I ended up with.
Space Marine Battalion
Transport Size: 12,495 tons
Build Cost: 1,217.8 BP
1x Space Marine Battalion Leader
737x Space Marine
200x Space Marine Destroyer
200x Space Marine Terminator
9x Supply Infantery
6x Anti Vehicle Emplacement Fortress Class
Front line defense and most notable difference is the inclusion of just a few HAV statics to deal with anythin too heavy for the the destroyer space marines.
Titan Battle Battalion Paladin
Transport Size: 12,455 tons
Build Cost: 506.9 BP
35x Titan Paladin Class
4x Supply Infantery
1x HQ Emplacment Battalion
The Paladin Titans are the workhorse class of titans, they are meant to do the majority of battle and can fight toe to toe with pretty much anything, except other titans and exceedingly heavily armored enemies. They sport 3xHCAP and a autocannon and strike fear into any enemy.
I also kept a collection of smaller 3125 titan formations, the old emperor titan meant for specialist roles should we run into other titans, they can be called upon to deal with them. There is also the Samurai Titan, who sports 4 CAP that can be send to deal with lightly armored enemies easily and finaly the sovereign class that sports 4 HAV and is meant to deal with enemies that are exceedingly heavily armored.
Catalans coming up later! What do guys think?
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The command Brigade. Since we got space to spare, why not two HQ (Size 50000)?
Because multiple HQs are worse that single HQs. In addition to the small decrease in commander survivability, HQs are more expensive than any other component so you are driving up the build cost of the formation - a non-trivial problem for larger HQs.
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Was that actually proven?
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Was that actually proven?
It follows directly from the mechanics. See Steve post here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10096.msg116211#msg116211) as well as empirical testing done here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11000.msg126816). This documentation is actually hard to find, since the feature was added much later than the main ground combat mechanics, but it is there.
For sake of example, consider a formation of 5,000 tons, with one or two INF+HQ5 command units (25 tons each) and the rest INF+PW (5 tons each). The HQ5 units are built as non-combat, which confers a 80% reduction in size for targeting purposes (i.e., enemy units are 20% as likely to target an element of this unit type) as well as an 80% penalty to firing accuracy. This means that the HQ is treated as a 5-ton unit for targeting purposes, rather than a 25-ton unit.
So for a formation with 1 HQ and 995 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (1*5) / (1*5 + 995*5) = 0.1004%.
For a formation with 2 HQ and 990 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (2*5) / (2*5 + 990*5) = 0.2016%. Since there are two HQs, there is a relative 50% chance for the formation commander to be killed if a HQ unit is destroyed, relative to the single-HQ formation, so the odds of the commander being killed are 0.1008% - as I said, slightly higher.
I have noted that commanders of ground formations do not always die when their HQs are destroyed, but if there is some fixed multiplier it should not change the math at all.
Now, there may possibly be some effect for preserving the overall HQ chain of command even if the commander dies. As far as I can tell, this is difficult and quite likely impossible to show theoretically for a general case because the overall loss rate of the formation(s) involved is necessary to include in a calculation, but it might be a present effect. However, the fact that HQ elements are so expensive (4x as much as any other component except STOs) means that it is not really worth it, IMO, as you usually need to squeeze every BP of ground units you can out of your training centers to build a large enough army to assault a NPR home world.
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Was that actually proven?
It follows directly from the mechanics. See Steve post here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10096.msg116211#msg116211) as well as empirical testing done here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11000.msg126816). This documentation is actually hard to find, since the feature was added much later than the main ground combat mechanics, but it is there.
For sake of example, consider a formation of 5,000 tons, with one or two INF+HQ5 command units (25 tons each) and the rest INF+PW (5 tons each). The HQ5 units are built as non-combat, which confers a 80% reduction in size for targeting purposes (i.e., enemy units are 20% as likely to target an element of this unit type) as well as an 80% penalty to firing accuracy. This means that the HQ is treated as a 5-ton unit for targeting purposes, rather than a 25-ton unit.
So for a formation with 1 HQ and 995 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (1*5) / (1*5 + 995*5) = 0.1004%.
For a formation with 2 HQ and 990 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (2*5) / (2*5 + 990*5) = 0.2016%. Since there are two HQs, there is a relative 50% chance for the formation commander to be killed if a HQ unit is destroyed, relative to the single-HQ formation, so the odds of the commander being killed are 0.1008% - as I said, slightly higher.
I have noted that commanders of ground formations do not always die when their HQs are destroyed, but if there is some fixed multiplier it should not change the math at all.
Now, there may possibly be some effect for preserving the overall HQ chain of command even if the commander dies. As far as I can tell, this is difficult and quite likely impossible to show theoretically for a general case because the overall loss rate of the formation(s) involved is necessary to include in a calculation, but it might be a present effect. However, the fact that HQ elements are so expensive (4x as much as any other component except STOs) means that it is not really worth it, IMO, as you usually need to squeeze every BP of ground units you can out of your training centers to build a large enough army to assault a NPR home world.
It depends, generals might be in short supply, often are in my games anyway. Perhaps not early on but later on they are. You also want the best ones too if you have more of them, especially good higher ranked ones. It is even often worth the effort of protecting them with PWL infantry in the rear in the same formation. IF that formation is targeted in a breakthrough the infantry will over time actually protect them from being destroyed too. Yes... the infantry will make the formation more likely to be hit, but if all HW formation and other rear formations have garrisons in them it does matter as they chance they are targeted then is as great as otherwise but they now have protection too.
I know it is marginal, but from a RP stand point it might make sense, especially to have two HQ units... so, your commanding officers are more safe. These officers are trained and skilled and it takes time to train new officers so you don't want them killed, even if the chance is small. You also increase the chance of an HQ being hit as units degrade in combat, so the chance really is not that small, only at the start.
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I didn't read much in depth cuz reading is for nerds, but what immediately stood out to me and compelled me to comment was how your units do not correspond with the size of troop bays (100, 1000, and 5000 if memory serves).
This is a mistake IMO. You should tailor the size of your forces so you can maximize the efficiency of each bay by making them as close to the limit as possible. I think Steve even had this in mind when making them; 5000 tons of troops can be made to have roughly the same composition as an IRL battalion while 1000 tons can make an IRL company.
Which leads me to my next issue which is modeling down to the company level. You really don't want to do that. Its micro Hell and insures you'll basically never have enough ground force commanders. It also makes units far too fragile, meaning you'll have to replace them a lot only exacerbating the micro tedium.
Only go for units smaller than 5000 tons when making non-combat units such as survey, command, construction, or boarding units.
I'm not going to say that you are SUPPOSED to play with battalions as your base unit, but it sure seems Steve was trying to nudge the player that way.
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Either approach is fine. As long as the overall balance of firepower is a suitable match for your opponent you can divide weapons among units however you like. One advantage of separate unit types is that you can drop 4xHCAP Titans in the initial wave of landings, gain intelligence on the enemy, and then choose what following waves look like based on that intelligence.
Hey, this is a good idea. I'd love to have a way to scout out enemy ground compositions before properly committing. Tho I'd rather not have to rely on a super-heavy unit to do it and instead have a team of stealthy commando to 'infiltrate' tho I doubt that is possible with the current mechanics. The enemy is aware of you as soon as you make planetfall, even if its just one guy from what I recall.
I really want a use for my Improved Personal Weapon/Heavy Power Armor Ranger units trained in all terrain combat that isn't just flavor.
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>> drop 4xHCAP Titans in the initial wave of landings, gain intelligence on the enemy
Reactor : Online
Sensors : Online
Weapons : Online
All systems : Nominal
The Lyran Commonwealth 1st Scout Lance has made planetfall, beginning patrol
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and in true steiner fashion, the method of reconnaissance is absorbing the fire of literally the entire defending force.
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So the titans worked excellently against the centurions and other such rif raf taking no damage whatsoever but then I found a planet full of rhakshakas or however they are called and got absolutely slaughtered as they apparently field some very heavy anti vehicle guns.
Might be wiser to go with a horde of cheap unarmored infantry for these guys as they seem to be able to blast right trough even my most heavy armor anyway?
Does anyone know if its possible to specifically target STOs? These guys got some heavy STO presence so I can't bomb them from orbit either.
Or maybe I can land extremely heavy force to scare them away from attacking and then just shell them into oblivion? How large a force difference do I need to make sure they don't attack? My plan of having infantery as Front Line Defence when assaulting planets have the weakness of not getting enough time to properly dig in to get the defensive bonuses, so maybe front line defense is pointless when attacking planets and just go all 2x front line attack 1x artillery support and 1x HQ Artillery Rear echelon for assaulting planets? Maybe split the artillery into two halves to support each front line attack? How does that support stuff actually work? Would splitting be pointless?
Right now I am just going 1x front line attack, 1x front line defense, 1x Support 1x Rear echelon. But maybe I should change up my front line (both attack and defence) paradigm and have groups based on whatever anti-X I want them to do, like anti infantery. Anti-Vehicle and so on?
Starting a new game for 2.0.2 so I wont have all the tech anymore tough.
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You can use ships to target STO's but not ground forces. You'll just have to hope to get lucky.