Author Topic: Static vs Mobile Ground Units  (Read 7613 times)

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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #15 on: June 28, 2020, 05:47:50 AM »
There are some interesting effects with how armour and penetration work. LAV is not tough enough to penetrate heavy static armour while medium pay allot of extra to kill the static unit so are not an efficient weapon to use from a cost perspective. Add in that static is much harder to hit and it will be very cost inefficient to use medium vehicles to destroy static fortifications. MAC weapons probably are them most efficient at destroying heavy static units but still not efficient enough.
I'd agree medium vehicles vs. static MAV isn't a great match-up for the vehicles.

What is a great matchup against static is LAV infantry.

Not it you have a CAP or HCAP in the Static instead it is not... ;)
If you're willing to spend money on infantry, CAP and HCAP lose a lot of their punch. Heavy power armor and genetic engineering make a seriously strong bullet sponge.

Also, some medium bombardment behind that strong bullet sponge is well-suited to plinking static emplacements.
In terms of defending then Static will almost always be the best possible answer. Against infantry with LAV weapon then a static with no armour and an CAP is straight up better if both are fortified. You can always find a version of Static that is better than anything else depending on the weapon you put in to it.
Citation needed...and how are you expecting the static force to be the one that gets to cheat at rock-paper-scissors?
I would also add that you are not really going to see two fortified sides every fight, in fact I would not really allow that in my games and I would not abuse a passive NPR so I can fortify my troops and then fight, that is a bit abusive of the game mechanics. In multi-faction games I certainly don't allow that when factions are on the same body at the start of a war. If you play like that then statics are even more powerful as a defensive structure.
Yeah, I'm not clear why you've been talking about the situation where both sides are fortified considering how that is nearly impossible in actual gameplay. (Outside the SM'd up situation of sharing a planet peacefully.)

Why don't you just do the math instead of using gut feeling which it seems like you are doing. Power armour is NOT better than pure infantry as a bullet sponge and I can prove that with math if you wish from a pure cost perspective.

It certainly is true that armour does count in an infantry versus infantry fight if that is what you are after but not if you just use the infantry to soak damage from a cost perspective and expect other units to deal the actual damage as infantry don't do all that much damage to most enemies other than infantry. Therefore a combination with cheap infantry can do allot in these instances as they are cheap for the amount of HP they get.

If your intention is to delay the enemy then light infantry is cheaper and more efficient... so it depends on what your intentions are. A combination of say Statics with HAV and MAV and light infantry is more cost efficient than marines in power armour and the static when attacked by a combination of heavy and medium vehicles armed with a combination of CAP, MAV and HAV for example. The light infantry will do next to no damage but the space marines will also do so little damage that it will still not matter in conjunction with how effective the static weapons are. From a defensive perspective then the light infantry will still be harder to kill as you have allot more of them and they also take up a larger space in the battlefield and that way protect the static units better as well.

If a Space Marine cost 0.18BP a light infantry cost 0.06BP so you get three times as many. If the enemy attack using CAP weapons only for anti-infantry weapons they kill 0.44 marines for each light infantry but as you have three times as many of them then they still last longer for the same cost. light infantry will deal very little damage to enemy vehicles but so will the marines as well.

The same is also true with light infantry in combination with say HCAP static versus marines in power armour. The ligh infantry soak the damage while the static do the damage. Here the power  infantry will do better if armed with LAV weapons though but still not effective enough from a math perspective.

Example.

1000 Space Marines with PWI, Power Armour  (5000t)
160 Space marines with LAV, Power Armour (2560t)

versus

3000 Light infantry with PWL, Light Armour (9000t)
40 Static with HCAP and Heavy Static Armour (1280t)

round 1.

3000 LI kill 18 Marines (PWI) and 10 Marines (LAV)
40 Static kill 160 Marines (PWI) and 80 Marines with (LAV)

1000 Marines (PWI) kill 875 Light infantry and 1.5 Static
160 Marines (LAV) kill 140 and 8.5 Static

Total loss is 180 Marines (PWI) and 90 Marine (LAV) for 1015 light infantry and 10 static.

So one third of the LI and one quarter of the static for more then half the Marine (LAV) and one fifth the regular marines. The ratio at which you have the troops will matter as it is downhill for the marines from here as they loose firepower to take down the static fast enough for the static to mow down the marines.

If you also include artillery into the picture from both sides then the favour shifts even more to using the light infantry as a shield.

You also need to look at the logistical side. The light defensive side in the above example consume 1110 GSP while the Marines consume 2260 GSP. So the Marines need twice the investment into supplies to keep fighting as well and this is also significant.
 
There is no question that armoured or heavy infantry is allot more effective when you look at the actual space they occupy, but this is only important when you drop them from orbit from an assaulyt ship as you are limited to how much troops you can drop on a planet and you want as much protection and firepower as you can get while doing so.

But from a defensive perspective then light forces are more efficient, especially for making a fight last as long as possible for reinforcement to arrive in the form of a counter attack by your fleets for example.

If you want to defend on a planet with terrain such as Jungle or Mountain I would go with regular infantry as light infantry become too expensive to train as they are rounded from 0.075 to 0.08 in cost. Regular infantry will on the other hand be rounded down from 0.125 to 0.12 so are way more effective as they will deal more damage to the enemy and still be cheap enough to do the trick of soaking damage. Marines in power armour is also rounded down but from a higher level so does not benefit as much from the rounding in cost while it is detrimental to light infantry and very helpful for regular infantry.

You then have role-playing factors of saving human life from harm which means you need as much protection on your troops as possible, at least from the ones you expect to actually fight and not just police the population. But that is a very different ethical question... ;)
« Last Edit: June 28, 2020, 06:54:33 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #16 on: June 28, 2020, 10:20:47 AM »
I just did a combat to actually test the above and it certainly is contest of patience as the combat will drag on for a very LOOONG time.. ;)

The light forces actually start to get the upper hand relatively early as the moral of the LAV marines start to falter and the damage on the static drop faster and faster due to how moral effect the battle as well.

Starting forces was...

3 Space marine regiments of...
1000 Spacemarine grunts (PWI, Power Armour)
200 Spacemarines Heavies (LAV, Power Armour)

against...
3 Garrison Regiments of..
3000 light Infantry (PWL, Light Armour)
60 Fortifications (HCAP, Heavy Armour, Static)

The cost of both are pretty much the same, the space marines could be a bit cheaper if they used PW instead of PWI but that does not seem likely in most cases to arm them like that so I did not.

After about 2 months of fighting..
Marine Grunts in each regiment are roughly 580, morale is 91
Marine Heavies in each regiment are roughly 43, morale is 70

Light infantry in each regiment 1700, morale is 91
Fortification in each regiment are roughly 45, morale is 90

Losses are now roughly about 1.5:1 so Space Marine looses 10 every 8 hour cycle and the other side about 15 light infantry and very rarely a fortification unit.

The Space Marine side still burn about 2970 GSP while the light infantry side burns 2338 GSP. From the start the Space Marine used up 7350 GSP and the Light Infantry side 3870 GSP.

I presume the fight will go on for a long while and if both side had been max fortification from the start then things would have taken way longer but that was not the test.

Why do I compare like this... because you have to do it this way... there is no point in having one side attack and the other defend... this test is about who is more resilient in defence and that is what we are testing. There are a few key reason why light infantry combine very well with static units which have to do with distribution of size and morale and allot of HP distributed on many difficult to hit units. Another thing is big difference in armour and damage distribution capabilities making the enemy waste as much AP and Damage as possible which cost resources and supplies.

Artillery is also something interesting to discuss... if you build artillery for defence there is almost no reason to put any armour on it as you are always better of with just more of it. But if you are going to assault a planet you should put as much armour on it as possible because that means it will survive better for the space it takes up on the ship. This is important when you look at counter battery fire.

If we are talking about invasions then there is no point in comparing costs as that is not what matters as much as the capacity to cram as much firepower and defensive capability into as tiny a space as possible, that means very costly units in terms of resources. If you instead would compare the marines with the light infantry and static with space on a drop ship things will look very different. You also most often can disregard supplies as you don't need to drop formations with lots of supplies. You can bring most of the supplies with regular troopships and unload it as you need it, more or less, so you are much less restricted in space for support forces.

The three space marine regiments above are about 7500t while the light infantry is over 10.000t worth of troops so not very space efficient, static units are not very good at attacking either so you would need to replace them with a vehicle type instead.

Another important thing to note is that technology difference also play a VERY big role on the importance of armour or numbers. But if all things are equal then numbers wins over quality. If your armour technology is better than their weapon technology then heavily armoured infantry will likely be more effective.

« Last Edit: June 28, 2020, 10:31:00 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 
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Offline Ulzgoroth

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #17 on: June 28, 2020, 09:32:59 PM »
Why don't you just do the math instead of using gut feeling which it seems like you are doing. Power armour is NOT better than pure infantry as a bullet sponge and I can prove that with math if you wish from a pure cost perspective.
If you're going to call on me to do the math, why follow that with paragraph on paragraph of never doing any math?

I don't know what math you've decided to do, since you didn't show any. My math says that heavy power armor compared to light armor is twice the armor for twice the cost. Twice the armor means four times less likely to die when hit. Provided said hit doesn't have more AP than the light armor does.

At equal weapon and armor tech, that provision holds for CAP, but not for HCAP. Against HCAP the armor value is only 4/3s of the AP (disregarding any rounding artifacts), making it a little less than twice as survivable as lighter armor. Against HCAP (or medium bombardment) that makes the armor a dubious investment...unless you care more about tonnage than cost, which you might for offensive infantry. Or if you are worried about a big soft infantry formation being a source of breakthroughs.

So if you're designing infantry to defend against an enemy with all heavy weapons - HCAP, antivehicle weapons, medium+ autocannons, medium+ bombardment, that sort, you quite possibly want to not bother with protection. If you're going up against an enemy heavy on personal weapons, CAP, light bombardment, and light autocannons, heavy powered armor will pay its way in survivability. I note that an enemy who believes that infantry should be a massed soft meat shield is inherently going to wind up heavy on personal weapons and thus giving an advantage to the higher-end options.

And then of course the infantry genetic enhancement options are effective against a slightly smaller but different slice of weapons, moving HCAP to the loser list but light bombardment and autocannon to the winner side of things.



...The balance on your experiment is kinda weird.
On the marine side, you've got PWI, which are clearly lousy in this situation and I tend to view doubtfully in general - they are better for their weight/cost than PW against targets with more than light armor. But they're still extremely weak against non-infantry targets. And you've given zero CAP/HCAP against an enemy with a human wave doctrine. That's pretty bad. I think the LAV is a decent pick for what it does though.

On the other side, you've got PWL troops, which...well, they're virtually unarmed. Two of them offers half the offensive effectiveness of one regular PW trooper. They're only a reasonable choice for two things: police work, and flooding the zone with chaff targets. Living sandbags to pit against the marines lack of automatic weapons. And then there's the one jewel in the whole setup - you gave the 'garrison' side HCAP fortifications, which completely negate the armor you chose for the 'marine' side. And in terms of effectiveness they make up an overwhelming majority of the 'garrison' firepower - with their shots each being 36 times as effective as the light infantry spitwads, they wind up constituting better than 80% of the damage going out. Good way to make the power armor look bad, that!



Very tangentially, it's interesting to look at how well LAV stacks up against actual heavy armor. LAV vs. heavy vehicle armor is 1 in 36 chance to kill on a hit. (1/9 to penetrate, 1/4 lethal.) A heavy streetsweeper tank that goes completely all-in on CAP looks like it should do a little better than its cost in light armor LAV troops in a no-fortification head-to-head or at full self-fortification. It falls behind on the way to maximum built-up fortification naturally. If the tank goes more expensive and less effective for the matchup with any non-CAP weapons that will make a hard swing in favor of the infantry of course.
 

Offline misanthropope

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #18 on: June 29, 2020, 02:14:22 PM »
ulz

the quadruple durability is only situational, for weapons with pen <= the less-armored units armor value.  in the case of infantry (in the generic uniform tech on both sides) that is PW, PWL, and CAP only.  CAP is obviously an important weapon, but HCAP is too and going from 1 to 2 armor less than doubles your durability there.

the alternative* is to double your body count, which doubles your durability against HCAP or anything else in the universe, and doubles your firepower to boot. 

if your arty and armor have so much firepower that you can dismiss your infantry's offense as meaningless, *and* you can be confident that a very high proportion of what's coming at you is CAP or lighter, then increasing the armor of your units is cost effective.  if not, not.

*this is assuming the ability to lead the extra soldiers effectively is either available or meaningless, which is reasonable under the conditions that are already necessary for armor to be good.  it also ignores the cost of transportation, which doesn't seem entirely honest, for invading armies.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #19 on: June 29, 2020, 03:07:06 PM »
Why don't you just do the math instead of using gut feeling which it seems like you are doing. Power armour is NOT better than pure infantry as a bullet sponge and I can prove that with math if you wish from a pure cost perspective.
If you're going to call on me to do the math, why follow that with paragraph on paragraph of never doing any math?

I don't know what math you've decided to do, since you didn't show any. My math says that heavy power armor compared to light armor is twice the armor for twice the cost. Twice the armor means four times less likely to die when hit. Provided said hit doesn't have more AP than the light armor does.

At equal weapon and armor tech, that provision holds for CAP, but not for HCAP. Against HCAP the armor value is only 4/3s of the AP (disregarding any rounding artifacts), making it a little less than twice as survivable as lighter armor. Against HCAP (or medium bombardment) that makes the armor a dubious investment...unless you care more about tonnage than cost, which you might for offensive infantry. Or if you are worried about a big soft infantry formation being a source of breakthroughs.

So if you're designing infantry to defend against an enemy with all heavy weapons - HCAP, antivehicle weapons, medium+ autocannons, medium+ bombardment, that sort, you quite possibly want to not bother with protection. If you're going up against an enemy heavy on personal weapons, CAP, light bombardment, and light autocannons, heavy powered armor will pay its way in survivability. I note that an enemy who believes that infantry should be a massed soft meat shield is inherently going to wind up heavy on personal weapons and thus giving an advantage to the higher-end options.

And then of course the infantry genetic enhancement options are effective against a slightly smaller but different slice of weapons, moving HCAP to the loser list but light bombardment and autocannon to the winner side of things.



...The balance on your experiment is kinda weird.
On the marine side, you've got PWI, which are clearly lousy in this situation and I tend to view doubtfully in general - they are better for their weight/cost than PW against targets with more than light armor. But they're still extremely weak against non-infantry targets. And you've given zero CAP/HCAP against an enemy with a human wave doctrine. That's pretty bad. I think the LAV is a decent pick for what it does though.

On the other side, you've got PWL troops, which...well, they're virtually unarmed. Two of them offers half the offensive effectiveness of one regular PW trooper. They're only a reasonable choice for two things: police work, and flooding the zone with chaff targets. Living sandbags to pit against the marines lack of automatic weapons. And then there's the one jewel in the whole setup - you gave the 'garrison' side HCAP fortifications, which completely negate the armor you chose for the 'marine' side. And in terms of effectiveness they make up an overwhelming majority of the 'garrison' firepower - with their shots each being 36 times as effective as the light infantry spitwads, they wind up constituting better than 80% of the damage going out. Good way to make the power armor look bad, that!



Very tangentially, it's interesting to look at how well LAV stacks up against actual heavy armor. LAV vs. heavy vehicle armor is 1 in 36 chance to kill on a hit. (1/9 to penetrate, 1/4 lethal.) A heavy streetsweeper tank that goes completely all-in on CAP looks like it should do a little better than its cost in light armor LAV troops in a no-fortification head-to-head or at full self-fortification. It falls behind on the way to maximum built-up fortification naturally. If the tank goes more expensive and less effective for the matchup with any non-CAP weapons that will make a hard swing in favor of the infantry of course.

Ok... let's do this VERY simple...

Firs of I chose the PWI as that uis what I believe you would give them and it would NOT change the result, neither would using CAP weapons either as you would only increase the damage not the resiliance that way. This was a test yto show how a combined force of light infantry and static will outclass a similar force to take them out in heavy armour. It would have made little to no difference if you thrown in some CAP weapons on the marines as that would just have make the LAV marines targeted even more by the Static which was the point I was showing all the time.

Let's look at the power armour versus light armour...

you pay 0.06 for a single PWL trooper who has 10/10 armour/HP and you pay 0.15 and get 15/10. As we are only interested in soaking damage here that is what we compare.

So... you will get 2.5 PWL troops or 1 marine... it will take 2.5 hits from a 10/10 weapon to kill all the PWL troopers but it only take 2.27 hits to take out the marine. So PWL troops will soak more damage for their cost... BUT almost every army will have allot of weapons that do much more damage and who instead of having a 44% to take out the power armoured marine take them out in one shot ALL of these shots also only take out ONE light infantry trooper. This is why they are so efficient.

When you then COMBINE them with something that actually DO damage... such as Static on the defence they will protect the static units (not do any real damage but they don't have to). The point is to protect the sources that do allot of damage and that was what I showed you in my example. The reason I used PWI weapons was because that is probably how you would arm your power infantry if you often find yourself fighting other powered infantry enemies, the cost and size increase are negligible for a considerable increase in AP on enemy powered infantry.

I hope that you understand what I was trying to achieve with that test... it had nothing to do with how good a marine is to take out other infantry because they are good at that but a static until is even better at that when protected by some PWL so as not to be sniped by some LAV armed marines.

Using genetic enginering on PWL troops actually can be quite beneficial, even just the first level as you don't want them to become too expensive, this has to do with how the AP/Damage profile look on other weapons.

The whole point with PWL infantry is to have allot of single bodies with a relatively LARGE mass to block incoming damage so your real effective killing units do the damage. This is why you don't care that the PWL do very little damage.

If you just take 25 light infantry against 10 marines they will loose... that is mathematically a certainty. But if you add 2 HCAP fortifications and 8 LAV Marines on the other side the power now shift to the light troopers favour for the reason that the 25 light infantry does a much better job at "protecting" the fortifications then the marines do protecting the LAV marines. If the marines can't protect the LAV marines they will have little to no hope against the fortifications.

25 light infantry have a weight of 75t
2 fortifications a weight of 64t

10 marine grunts have a weight of 50t
8 LAV marines have a weight of 128t


You also can look at your tank scenario as well...

Heavy tank with CAP, HAV and heavy armour

You could then field say...

15 LAV RPG-teams protected by 115 PWL militia.

Each RPG team has a 1/36 chance to kill so the chance to kill the tank each round is around 33%... they will likely have many rounds to try...

Even if you are make an infantry killing tank like 2xCAP you still get like 10 LAV and 70 militia so the tank is not as tough as it think it is. Although using Medium Bombardment in support position is actually better than RPG armed militia.

Again I have showed how the soaking of cheap infantry of enemy fire is the main point of having them for defensive (or even offensive) purposes. You can see this as specialising a ship. Light infantry are specialised for defending other units while Statics are specialised to do damage against other units.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 06:01:29 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #20 on: June 29, 2020, 03:39:30 PM »
*this is assuming the ability to lead the extra soldiers effectively is either available or meaningless, which is reasonable under the conditions that are already necessary for armor to be good.  it also ignores the cost of transportation, which doesn't seem entirely honest, for invading armies.

And I also think that I tried to explain this as well. When you create an army who's role is to invade a planet the cost is basically an "almost" none factor as space on the ship really will matter more. Drop capable ships are not really cheap to build in large numbers. They will cost you about 8-12.000 BP for 100.000t carry capacity depending on engine tech and how much defences you want on them, so not really cheap.

Size for garrison forces certainly IS a none issue, more or less, as you can move the troops over a much longer time period using less ships and much less expensive ones.
 

Offline Ulzgoroth

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #21 on: June 29, 2020, 09:16:08 PM »
Ok... let's do this VERY simple...

Firs of I chose the PWI as that uis what I believe you would give them and it would NOT change the result, neither would using CAP weapons either as you would only increase the damage not the resiliance that way. This was a test yto show how a combined force of light infantry and static will outclass a similar force to take them out in heavy armour. It would have made little to no difference if you thrown in some CAP weapons on the marines as that would just have make the LAV marines targeted even more by the Static which was the point I was showing all the time.

Let's look at the power armour versus light armour...

you pay 0.06 for a single PWL trooper who has 10/10 armour/HP and you pay 0.15 and get 15/10. As we are only interested in soaking damage here that is what we compare.
What? No. That's not what we compare.

If you're only interested in soaking damage, and that's the only thing you're grading on? You don't get to hamper the armored units with heavier PW. If the test is of who is the best sandbag, it's blatantly unfair to hamper one side with heavier weapons. There's no reason you can't make PWL heavy power armor. I probably wouldn't, because I don't build troops as pure bullet-sponges, but if it's an infantry bullet-sponge contest you want PWL is the obligatory choice.

Basic powered armor costs 1.5 times as much as light armor and gives 1.5x the armor. It takes 2.25 hits at 1x AP to kill the one power armor troop, and 1.5 to kill the 1.5 light armor troops. For absorptiveness against small arms, armor is cost effective.

There's two drawbacks of using armor here. One is that armor makes your bullet-sponges more expensive per ton, so if you're working to a cost budget you have less tonnage of them and they draw less fire away from the units they're supposed to meat-shield for. The other is that armor is partly or entirely wasted against higher-AP weapons. (In general, there's also drawback 1.5 that you put out less firepower per unit cost. But we're not caring about firepower here, right?)

Again, the test was stacked against the 'marines' to a remarkable degree. They're using armor that's totally unfit for the situation and giving up half their potential numbers to carry weapons that are irrelevant to the purported purpose of the test.



I also question the interpretation. So about 75% of the LAV troops got killed, while only 1/4th of the static guns did. Sure enough. But is that really because the marines are bad at meat-shielding (which they are), or are there other more important factors in play?

The meat-shield casualties are actually even - the marines had lost 42%, and the militia had lost 43%. So the marines aren't falling behind because they're dying off faster, despite their mostly useless armor and three-fold inferior numbers. (Of course, the reason they're not dying off faster than the militia is that they are killing the militia with their personal weapons. More than 80% of militia casualties would be from the grunts shooting them.)

So why are the LAV troops dropping like flies? Well for one thing, as an element they're more than twice as big a target as the bunkers, with a meat-shield that is 1/3 smaller by tonnage. So they're drawing a three times larger share of the incoming fire. Or they were before they got massacred down to size.

And then there's the composition of that incoming fire, which is dominated by 360 HCAP shots with guaranteed lethality. For comparison, what was coming at the bunkers? There's 200 shots with a 4/9ths chance to kill from the LAV troops. And a thousand PWI shots with less than 2% chance to kill. That's approximately 108 kills inbound.

So for the high-value units, you've got the marines drawing three times as big a share of the danger, and the danger is more than three times as much (actually with the PWL fire it's more than 4 times as much). And as it turned out they suffered about 10 times as many losses. That fits together pretty well, doesn't it?

You know what that is? It's a monument the the utility of having high hit points and armor. Which the militia composition obviously recognizes. A heavy armor static HCAP costs 6 times as much as a light armor infantry HCAP would. (Infantry can use HCAP, right?). But those would die 12 times easier against the marine force composition (even more if the marines weren't lugging LAV). And would draw three times more fire because you'd have that much more tonnage for the same cost.
Heavy tank with CAP, HAV and heavy armour
Oh, and you can stop right there. I already said that if the tank doesn't have double CAP it loses. Heavy armor heavy vehicle with CAP + HAV is definitely outmatched by its cost in unarmored LAV infantry, regardless of any benefit of PWL meat-shields. That said, yes, trading some LAV for PWI bodies at the 1 for 5-and-1/3 exchange rate is advantageous.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 09:28:40 PM by Ulzgoroth »
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #22 on: June 30, 2020, 05:33:29 AM »
Ok... you seem to just blatantly picking out allot of my point out of context to be honest... I DID throw in the double anti-infantry CAP armour for example which you did not even comment on and focused on the heavy with HAV and CAP... that is a bit dishonest in my opinion. The reason I showed the first was because that is probably a common way to build them. The best anti-infantry tank probably is a medium tank with dual CAP and light armour (from a cost perspective).

You did touch on some of the points that IS important though which is the distribution of tonnage. This is also why using power armour on the light infantry is not something you want... you want cheap troops to shield the more valuable troops.

If you look at my real example, the test I did you see how this clearly worked in favour of the light troops, they could mow down the marine LAV troops and the marines mainly killed light infantry.

The other important point is when you look at a real army, you will not just have CAP and infantry weapons in it, the light infantry are THE BEST way to tank everything in that context because they are so cheap. They even tank CAP better than regular marines in power armour and roughly the same as anyone in heavy power armour.

1 light infantry PWL 0.06 cost
1 marine HPA 1.5 cost
1 marine HPA 2.0 cost

for 6 BP you get to tank regular personal weapons shots of...

light infantry 10 shots
Marine with PA 9.1 shots
marine with HPA 12 shots

So HPA will tank a bit better per shot but will be lousy at actually protecting other troops which is why the PWL troops is a better mathematically choice for tanking damage. The PWL troops have a weight of 30 tons, the PA marines 16 tons and the HPA marines only 12 tons.

THIS is why PWL troops is the better troops for defending and combining them with fortification IS more effective as I just shown in my example.

Please show me an example where marines are better for the cost of protecting other troops?!?

I'm willing to set up some test that meet your criteria of fairness!!

The heavy armour on the fortification was actually sub optimal in my test as using three times as many with light armour would have provided an even more devastating result even if more HCAP static would get destroyed.


« Last Edit: June 30, 2020, 06:48:14 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #23 on: June 30, 2020, 09:36:06 AM »
I have prepared a role-play oriented invasion army of some Star Wars themed imperial invaders racial tech is approximately around Ion age technology, weapons and armour is strength 10.

Invasion force

Total Formations: 4
Total Transport Size: 66,796 tons
Total Cost: 4,994 BP

2,500x Stormtrooper (PWI,PA)
500x Stormtrooper (blaster cannon) (LVA,PA)
500x Stormtrooper (multi-blaster) (CAP,PA)
100x Heavy Support Balster Cannons (Static, Medium Armour, MBL)
100x Heavy Support Tank (Heavy Vehicle, Heavy Armour, 2xMAC)
50x Logistics (trucks)
50x AT-AT walker (Super-heavy Vehicle,Super-heavy Armour, 2xMAV,1xHCAP)
50x AT-ST walker (Medium Vehicle, Light Armour, LAV, HCAP)
25x Forward Fire Direction operators
6x Stormtrooper Batallion HQ
2x Stormtrooper Regiment HQ

In orbit they also have...

Five Hammer class Assault Carriers
Code: [Select]
Hammer class Assault Carrier      31,246 tons       1,040 Crew       3,056.7 BP       TCS 625    TH 1,250    EM 0
2000 km/s      Armour 7-88       Shields 0-0       HTK 225      Sensors 11/11/0/0      DCR 32      PPV 245
Maint Life 2.77 Years     MSP 2,093    AFR 651%    IFR 9.0%    1YR 394    5YR 5,915    Max Repair 312.5 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 2,000 tons     Magazine 325   
Captain    Control Rating 3   BRG   AUX   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Flight Crew Berths 40    Morale Check Required   

Girodyne Tier-58  Ion Turbine Stardrive (2)    Power 1250    Fuel Use 52.41%    Signature 625    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 2,400,000 Litres    Range 26.4 billion km (152 days at full power)

PB-R35   Heavy Planetary Bombardment Laser (5x4)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 27-1     RM 10,000 km    ROF 135       
PB-R20   Medium Planetary Bombardment Laser (15x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 12-1     RM 10,000 km    ROF 60       
PB-R10  Light Planetary Bombardment Laser (30x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 10,000 km    ROF 15       
Faust Industries  PD Blaster System (5x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Indigo Ground-support Fire-control System (3)     Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 1,500 km/s     33 28 23 19 14 9 5 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R53-PB60 (1)     Total Power Output 53.2    Exp 30%

Pax Hustana XN-03 Suite  High Resolution Sensor (1)     GPS 2240     Range 42.7m km    Resolution 80
Pax Hustana XN-03 Suite  Torpedo Detection Sensor (1)     GPS 28     Range 9.9m km    MCR 891.1k km    Resolution 1
Pax Hustana  XN-03 Suite  EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km
Pax Hustana  XN-03 Suite  Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km

ECM 20

Strike Group
16x TIE/b Bomber   Speed: 6189 km/s    Size: 2.42

Total of 80 TIE bomber for support..
Code: [Select]
TIE/b class Bomber      122 tons       6 Crew       44.5 BP       TCS 2    TH 15    EM 0
6189 km/s      Armour 2-2       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0.6
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 24%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 2    5YR 29    Max Repair 20 MSP
Magazine 12   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Sienar Fleer Systems STD-P54  Twin Ion Drives (1)    Power 15    Fuel Use 4676.54%    Signature 15    Explosion 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres    Range 0 billion km (1 hours at full power)

Size 12 Fighter Pod Bay (1)     Pod Size: 12    Hangar Reload 173 minutes    MF Reload 28 hours
TIE/b bomber pod (1)    Armour Penetration: 17     Damage: 20     Shots: 3

The combat will be done on a barren moon so there will be no terrain influencing the  combat and no officers will be assigned on either side as well. The defensive side will enjoy full fortifications.
The defensive side will get a total of 1900-2000BP to build their garrison and will know the composition of the enemy forces. The combat will go on for three month and then I will get a good result of the outcome and what was the best defence to stall or even beat the invading force. All defence forces also need to have enough supplies to last combat for three month also included in the cost.

I will present two possible defence forces...we can run a few more if anyone want to try something else to see how they do.

« Last Edit: June 30, 2020, 08:23:31 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #24 on: June 30, 2020, 11:04:41 AM »
Two possible garrison forces to test the armoured versus less armoured type of defence from the Warhammer universe this time... ;)

Space Marine Garrison Force

Total Formations: 4
Total Transport Size: 41,386 tons
Total Cost:  1,949BP

2,400x Space Marine (Bolter) (PWI, PA)
240x Space Marine (Heavy Bolters) (HCAP, PA)
240x Space Marine (Bazooka) (LVA, PA)
120x Logistics (truck)
75x Heavily Fortified Lascannon bunkers (Static, Heavy Armour, MAV)
60x Automated AA installations (Static, Light Armour, LAA)
45x Heavily Fortified H.Lascannon bunkers (Static, Heavy Armour, HAV)
25x Fortified Artillery Emplacement (Static, Medium Armour, MBL)
10x Fortified MAA installations (Static, Medium Armour, MAA)
5x Batallion HQ-12k (fortified)
2x Regiment HQ-45k (fortified)



Militia Garrison Force

Total Formations: 4
Total Transport Size: 80,919 tons
Total Cost: 1,944 BP

11,400x Militia Infantry (PWL, LA)
345x Heavy Bolter Emplacement (Static, Light Armour, HCAP)
345x RPG Infantry
180x Lascannon Emplacement (Static, Light Armour, MAV)
180x Logistics (truck)
90x Heavy Lascannon Emplacement (Static, Light Armour, HAV)
60x Automated AA installations (Static, Light Armour, LAV)
35x Fortified Artillery Emplacements (Static, Medium Armour, MBL)
10x Fortified MAA installations (Static, Medium Armour, MAA)
5x Static HQ-23k
2x Static HQ-85k
« Last Edit: July 01, 2020, 08:05:03 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Ulzgoroth

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #25 on: June 30, 2020, 12:12:43 PM »
Ok... you seem to just blatantly picking out allot of my point out of context to be honest... I DID throw in the double anti-infantry CAP armour for example which you did not even comment on and focused on the heavy with HAV and CAP... that is a bit dishonest in my opinion. The reason I showed the first was because that is probably a common way to build them. The best anti-infantry tank probably is a medium tank with dual CAP and light armour (from a cost perspective).
I admit, I missed that line since you started the vehicle bit out with what looked like a complete strawman, knocking over a vehicle I'd already pointed out as non-viable.

What's your rationale for double-CAP medium vehicle without armor? It does give the best CAP/ton (aside from infantry) and per cost (aside from infantry and light static) but if you went down to light vehicles you'd get 1.75 times as many hulls. They'd have less HP each, making them easier to kill with LAV, but the numbers put the light vehicles a hair ahead on survivability per ton or cost. Plus, as you like to emphasize, they're much better at tolerating the casualties if the enemy has some MAV+ or MB+ weapons.
You did touch on some of the points that IS important though which is the distribution of tonnage. This is also why using power armour on the light infantry is not something you want... you want cheap troops to shield the more valuable troops.
A shield of unarmored troops is a big soft shield - it gives a lot of coverage but is whittled away fast. A shield of armored troops is a small hard shield - it gives less coverage, but it endures.

Provided, that is, that the threat profile is such that the armor is useful. PA shielding troops are inexcusable if the enemy's significant firepower is dominated by high-AP weapons rather than PW/L and CAP.
If you look at my real example, the test I did you see how this clearly worked in favour of the light troops, they could mow down the marine LAV troops and the marines mainly killed light infantry.
I think I pretty solidly demonstrated that the flaws of marine grunts as meat-shields had almost nothing to do with that outcome. It was caused by the LAV troops being bulky soft targets while the static fortifications were dense hard targets...and the HCAP bunker being much better at killing the LAV troops than the other way around.
The other important point is when you look at a real army, you will not just have CAP and infantry weapons in it, the light infantry are THE BEST way to tank everything in that context because they are so cheap.

They even tank CAP better than regular marines in power armour and roughly the same as anyone in heavy power armour.
They absolutely do not do that. That's ridiculous. See below...
1 light infantry PWL 0.06 cost
1 marine HPA 1.5 cost
1 marine HPA 2.0 cost

for 6 BP you get to tank regular personal weapons shots of...

light infantry 10 shots
Marine with PA 9.1 shots
marine with HPA 12 shots

So HPA will tank a bit better per shot but will be lousy at actually protecting other troops which is why the PWL troops is a better mathematically choice for tanking damage. The PWL troops have a weight of 30 tons, the PA marines 16 tons and the HPA marines only 12 tons.

THIS is why PWL troops is the better troops for defending and combining them with fortification IS more effective as I just shown in my example.

Please show me an example where marines are better for the cost of protecting other troops?!?

I'm willing to set up some test that meet your criteria of fairness!!
You're doing the thing again where you declare you're rating by meatshield performance only and then force the armored troops to carry heavier weapons. Stop doing that. If we're talking about infantry meat shield performance only, it is absolutely correct that PWL wins. There is no rule that you can't combine PA or HPA with PWL. If you're going to actually look at the merits of armored infantry for damage soaking you have to stop pretending there is such a rule.

If you do the exact same calculation you just did, but recognize that PA costs 0.9 and HPA costs 1.2, you'll see the start of the example you asked for, because they are in fact much better at tanking CAP/PW shots. Now, for them to be better for the cost at protecting other units is harder, since you do indeed get a smaller shield. You need a situation where the meat shield is dying faster than the units they're trying to protect, and with the meat shield being 3 tons per figure and 'high value' being at least 12 and often a lot more, that's demanding. Of course, your experiment from the militia side shows that situation looks like - highly protected, relatively compact high-value units opposed by a force with a lot of firepower that isn't good at killing the high value units. Consider how fast the militia would have gone down if instead of 1000 grunts the marines had 500 CAP. (I'm not saying 500 CAP/200 LAV is a good force composition. I'm saying that what it would do to the militia would be helpful to demonstrate the downside of unarmored infantry.)
The heavy armour on the fortification was actually sub optimal in my test as using three times as many with light armour would have provided an even more devastating result even if more HCAP static would get destroyed.
It might have been a more devastating result, but it would have looked a lot worse in terms of the protective value of the militia meatshields. Which is what you've claimed the experiment was about.

EDIT: CORRECTION, I mixed up LAV stats here.
Light armored HCAP static would have three times the units, but losing the armor would mean they have roughly three times the incoming danger. (Because the 1000 PWI go from under 2% to 1/9th chance to kill and LAV becomes a guaranteed kill.) And being three times as many units would nearly double the fraction of hits that landed on them. So they'd proportionately take 6 times as many unit losses, or twice the element fraction loss. That might tail off as the heavier firepower knocked down the marines' ability to do damage, though.
« Last Edit: June 30, 2020, 12:25:16 PM by Ulzgoroth »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #26 on: June 30, 2020, 01:03:58 PM »
Ok... you seem to just blatantly picking out allot of my point out of context to be honest... I DID throw in the double anti-infantry CAP armour for example which you did not even comment on and focused on the heavy with HAV and CAP... that is a bit dishonest in my opinion. The reason I showed the first was because that is probably a common way to build them. The best anti-infantry tank probably is a medium tank with dual CAP and light armour (from a cost perspective).
I admit, I missed that line since you started the vehicle bit out with what looked like a complete strawman, knocking over a vehicle I'd already pointed out as non-viable.

What's your rationale for double-CAP medium vehicle without armor? It does give the best CAP/ton (aside from infantry) and per cost (aside from infantry and light static) but if you went down to light vehicles you'd get 1.75 times as many hulls. They'd have less HP each, making them easier to kill with LAV, but the numbers put the light vehicles a hair ahead on survivability per ton or cost. Plus, as you like to emphasize, they're much better at tolerating the casualties if the enemy has some MAV+ or MB+ weapons.
You did touch on some of the points that IS important though which is the distribution of tonnage. This is also why using power armour on the light infantry is not something you want... you want cheap troops to shield the more valuable troops.
A shield of unarmored troops is a big soft shield - it gives a lot of coverage but is whittled away fast. A shield of armored troops is a small hard shield - it gives less coverage, but it endures.

Provided, that is, that the threat profile is such that the armor is useful. PA shielding troops are inexcusable if the enemy's significant firepower is dominated by high-AP weapons rather than PW/L and CAP.
If you look at my real example, the test I did you see how this clearly worked in favour of the light troops, they could mow down the marine LAV troops and the marines mainly killed light infantry.
I think I pretty solidly demonstrated that the flaws of marine grunts as meat-shields had almost nothing to do with that outcome. It was caused by the LAV troops being bulky soft targets while the static fortifications were dense hard targets...and the HCAP bunker being much better at killing the LAV troops than the other way around.
The other important point is when you look at a real army, you will not just have CAP and infantry weapons in it, the light infantry are THE BEST way to tank everything in that context because they are so cheap.

They even tank CAP better than regular marines in power armour and roughly the same as anyone in heavy power armour.
They absolutely do not do that. That's ridiculous. See below...
1 light infantry PWL 0.06 cost
1 marine HPA 1.5 cost
1 marine HPA 2.0 cost

for 6 BP you get to tank regular personal weapons shots of...

light infantry 10 shots
Marine with PA 9.1 shots
marine with HPA 12 shots

So HPA will tank a bit better per shot but will be lousy at actually protecting other troops which is why the PWL troops is a better mathematically choice for tanking damage. The PWL troops have a weight of 30 tons, the PA marines 16 tons and the HPA marines only 12 tons.

THIS is why PWL troops is the better troops for defending and combining them with fortification IS more effective as I just shown in my example.

Please show me an example where marines are better for the cost of protecting other troops?!?

I'm willing to set up some test that meet your criteria of fairness!!
You're doing the thing again where you declare you're rating by meatshield performance only and then force the armored troops to carry heavier weapons. Stop doing that. If we're talking about infantry meat shield performance only, it is absolutely correct that PWL wins. There is no rule that you can't combine PA or HPA with PWL. If you're going to actually look at the merits of armored infantry for damage soaking you have to stop pretending there is such a rule.

If you do the exact same calculation you just did, but recognize that PA costs 0.9 and HPA costs 1.2, you'll see the start of the example you asked for, because they are in fact much better at tanking CAP/PW shots. Now, for them to be better for the cost at protecting other units is harder, since you do indeed get a smaller shield. You need a situation where the meat shield is dying faster than the units they're trying to protect, and with the meat shield being 3 tons per figure and 'high value' being at least 12 and often a lot more, that's demanding. Of course, your experiment from the militia side shows that situation looks like - highly protected, relatively compact high-value units opposed by a force with a lot of firepower that isn't good at killing the high value units. Consider how fast the militia would have gone down if instead of 1000 grunts the marines had 500 CAP. (I'm not saying 500 CAP/200 LAV is a good force composition. I'm saying that what it would do to the militia would be helpful to demonstrate the downside of unarmored infantry.)
The heavy armour on the fortification was actually sub optimal in my test as using three times as many with light armour would have provided an even more devastating result even if more HCAP static would get destroyed.
It might have been a more devastating result, but it would have looked a lot worse in terms of the protective value of the militia meatshields. Which is what you've claimed the experiment was about.

EDIT: CORRECTION, I mixed up LAV stats here.
Light armored HCAP static would have three times the units, but losing the armor would mean they have roughly three times the incoming danger. (Because the 1000 PWI go from under 2% to 1/9th chance to kill and LAV becomes a guaranteed kill.) And being three times as many units would nearly double the fraction of hits that landed on them. So they'd proportionately take 6 times as many unit losses, or twice the element fraction loss. That might tail off as the heavier firepower knocked down the marines' ability to do damage, though.

I just make a brief response here...

lightly armed infantry make a far better meat-shield because they have allot of bodies AND are bulky at the same time... it is a combination effect, that is why they protect better and also why using power armour on them will not make them better rather worse at it.

Example...

10 PWL in light armour can tank 10 regular shots and weighs 30 tons

5 PWL can tank 20 regular shots and weight 15 tons

the problem is two fold... the first one is that the latter will allow allot more damage to go against your high valued targets from day one and the second is that they still die to heavier weapons as easy as the first one and if one of the latter die to such a weapon they loose allot more resilience in the process.

You want to get your heavy weapons to shoot as much at he enemy expensive units as possible... when the expensive units have been reduced to none threatening levels then the infantry will die quickly enough and will never be able to stand up to your heavy units anyway.

Please run a test and build an assaulting army that use a mix of weapons that are reasonable then build a defensive garrison around heavy power armour PWL and one with Light Armour. The one with light armour will be more efficient at allowing your other troops to concentrate on the high value targets which in turn reduce the incoming damage more than the resilience of the heavy power armour armour infantry can tank.
 
You have to understand that "removing" enemy units also make your units more resilient in the process.

I will add a third test garrison to the above test and replace the light armour PWL with heavy power armour PWL instead and show what I mean.
 

Offline Ulzgoroth

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #27 on: June 30, 2020, 02:39:18 PM »
I just make a brief response here...

lightly armed infantry make a far better meat-shield because they have allot of bodies AND are bulky at the same time... it is a combination effect, that is why they protect better and also why using power armour on them will not make them better rather worse at it.

Example...

10 PWL in light armour can tank 10 regular shots and weighs 30 tons

5 PWL can tank 20 regular shots and weight 15 tons

the problem is two fold... the first one is that the latter will allow allot more damage to go against your high valued targets from day one and the second is that they still die to heavier weapons as easy as the first one and if one of the latter die to such a weapon they loose allot more resilience in the process.
I literally stated this in the post.
You want to get your heavy weapons to shoot as much at he enemy expensive units as possible... when the expensive units have been reduced to none threatening levels then the infantry will die quickly enough and will never be able to stand up to your heavy units anyway.

Please run a test and build an assaulting army that use a mix of weapons that are reasonable then build a defensive garrison around heavy power armour PWL and one with Light Armour. The one with light armour will be more efficient at allowing your other troops to concentrate on the high value targets which in turn reduce the incoming damage more than the resilience of the heavy power armour armour infantry can tank.
You say you want to get your high value units to concentrate on the enemy high value units.

There is literally only one thing you can do that will help your high-value units concentrate on the enemy high-value units, and that's killing the other enemy units. That is, the exact thing that you are trying to say doesn't matter. Nothing else will increase the fraction of 'high value' shots finding 'high value' targets.

(For further confusion, killing the enemy chaff is something light PWL troops are in fact better at than armored ones. They're still garbage at it because PWL are terrible weapons, but it's a point in their favor.)


The model of chaff that doesn't kill much of anything plus high value units that kill each other and then casually win is also obviously very incomplete. Look back at that marines and militia experiment again! The marine grunts are supposed to be (bad) chaff, but they're actually something else - they're (bad) medium-value units that score the most kills of any element in the experiment. The marine heavies are 'high value' units that are just as vulnerable as the marine grunts but specialized in taking out hard targets, while the fortifications are 'high value' units that are extremely hard to kill and specialized in crowd control.

Consider what happens to the experiment if you give the militia the marines' guns. You're down to only 1500 of them - but that's 1500 shots that are 70% as effective as the 360 HCAP shots. More than triples the militia force's firepower. They'd lose infantry nearly twice as fast and the fortifications would become more exposed as the infantry died, but they'd lose enemies of both types three times as fast.

Set that alongside what happens if you swap the marine PWI for CAP - Again half as many figures to lose...and again around triple the outgoing damage. There would be a lot less militia to block for the fortifications by the time they died, though certainly pitted against the overwhelming power of the fortifications they and the heavies would die.

I'm not saying chaff isn't a valid role. I think there's no better counter to a superheavy firing a SHAV shot than a light PWL infantry unit absorbing that shot. But if chaff is useful, that makes removing chaff useful, so that next time that SHAV has a better chance to hit something worthwhile. And heavily protected units with low fire rates are vulnerable to softer units with more numerous anti-heavy weapons...which may in turn be vulnerable to anti-chaff weapons or intermediate weapons like autocannon or bombardment depending on how light the light units are.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #28 on: June 30, 2020, 08:14:34 PM »
Ok... some test data.. I have one more fight to do with the power armoured PWL troops...

Test 1

Space Marines vs The Empire

I stopped recording this after one week as the result was given and in week 2 The Empire started to do several "break through" attacks as well.

After 1 week of fighting

Starting Strength / Current Strength (Morale)

Space Marine

SM (bolters) 2400 / 1368 (87)
SM (h.bolters) 240 / 32 (67)
SM (bazooka) 240 / 56 (75)
LAA guns 60 / 17 (76)
MAV forts 75 / 26 (79)
HAV forts 45 / 12 (74)
Artillery 25 / 5 (70)
MAA 10 / 7 (92)

Total Army Moral : 86



The Empire


ST (blasters)
2500 / 1789 (85)
ST (m.blasters) 500 / 281 (76)
ST (Blast.Can) 500 / 211 (66)
Sup. Tank 100 / 83 (91)
AT-ST 50 / 38 (87)
AT-AT 50 / 48 (98)
Artillery 100 / 78 (90)
FFD 25 / 21 (92)

Total Army Moral: 91

The result was a given after this as the Space Marine had practically no heavy equipment left after a few more days and about 20% of the Marine grunts.


Test 2

Imperial Guard

Starting Strengt / Week1(moral) / Week2(etc...

Guardsmen  11400 / 10108(97) / 9632(96) / 9010(95)
RPG guard  345 / 181(86) / 130(79) / 89(72)
H.Bolter Empl.  345 / 215(89) /158(83) / 95(73)
Lasc. Empl. 180 / 85(84) / 62(78) / 33(67)
H.Lasc. Empl.  90 / 39(83) / 27(75) 13(64)
LAA Empl.  60 / 36(89) / 32(86) / 27(83)
Artillery  35  / 26(93) / 20(88) / 15(78)
MAA  10 / 10(100) / 9(98) / 9(98)

Total Army Morale 94 / 93 / 91


The Empire

ST (blasters) 2500 / 1853(86) / 1541(79) / 1217(70)
ST (m.blasters) 500 / 212(67) / 193(63) / 116(49)
ST (Blast.Can) 500 / 286(76) / 138(56) / 83(44)
Sup. Tank 100 / 66(82) / 55(73) / 49(71)
AT-ST 50 / 39(70) / 28(75) / 20(64)
AT-AT 50 / 49(99) / 48(98) / 46(96)
Artillery 100 / 68(91) / 36(78) / 33(77)
FFD 25 / 24(98) / 23(95 / 22(94)

Army Moral : 91 / 81 / 78


With these configuration the Imperial Guard garrison managed to stop the assault in its track while the Space Marines got overrun... the main reason for this is the distribution of forces as the Guards managed to keep their heavy guns for being attacked better than the marines despite the marines using heavy armour on their gun to protect them and making them overall smaller for their ability to survive.

I will do another test tomorrow with heavy powered PWL troops as well and see if they do as well... I doubt it as the militia did not really loose that many troops to begin with in this fight and their importance in this battle was covering the other parts of the army not surviving, they do that with numbers alone enough as it is.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2020, 03:49:09 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Ulzgoroth

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Re: Static vs Mobile Ground Units
« Reply #29 on: June 30, 2020, 09:51:05 PM »
46 out of 50 AT-ATs fully operational when you've lost a large majority of your anti-vehicle assets is 'stopped in its tracks'?

Though I assume that the oddity of the marines annihilating the AT-AT force is down to extremely capricious luck, Or possibly a reporting error considering you've got that last AT-AT as remarkably unshaken by the catastrophe that befell their element? If you listed kills rather than survivors there, then certainly the troops you wanted to do better did do better...