C# Ground Combat

[Steve Walmsley]

In terms of small versus large formation I remember that Steve did something to the mechanic to make small formations work, don't remember what that was though.

If you have one large formation, then the best defence is many small formations, because you can only attack one formation at once while all those small formations will attack you. On the other hand, many small formations are unlikely to achieve breakthroughs, plus it will be hard to find good commanders for all of them so overall combat power is reduced. Morale loss is dependent on casualties formation size, so small formations will lose morale quickly.

The mechanics may still adjust depending on play test as it is quite a complex system.

[Bremen]

what benefit is there to being front line defense instead of attack?  i can imagine entrenchment but can't find a statement that confirms this clearly.  you lose less morale for getting your tail kicked, but that seems... not a great thing to be banking on.

in the crusade fiction, there is a ground action where it is observed the Bad Guys can't attack to disrupt the Good Guys fortifying without giving up their own entrenchment bonus.  But after the Good Guys fortify, they go back to fighting, presumably with some kind of benefit for having done so.  whatever the Good Guys did later, why couldn't the Bad Guys have done that sooner?

I'm not Steve, but I have been following the ground combat pretty avidly, so I think this is right.

Front Line Defense will participate in direct combat, but get to use fortifications. Front Line Attack also participate in the same combat, but give up any fortification bonus in return for the chance at breakthroughs. On a breakthrough you get free attacks, but IIRC the defending support units don't, which means you get free extra shots.

In the AAR Steve's forces hit on a situation where the enemy was fortified and they weren't (the Imperium was conducting an invasion), so he elected to move his forces into rear assignments, so the enemy's front line defense units had nothing to engage, and wait for fortification. This tactic has an easy counter - Let's say Side A is the invader and Side B is the defender. If Side B puts even a single unit on front line attack, it will start getting one sided attacks in on Side A, and if Side B put any units into front line defense to block the breakthroughs, those units would then be forced to engage all of Side A's units on front line defense and be rapidly overwhelmed. So, assuming I have the rules right, the scenario in the AAR only worked because the AI wasn't programmed to put any units on front line attack and let the Imperium spend months fortifying - hopefully the AI on release will be smart enough to do this if you try that tactic.

I've already incorporated this into my theorycrafting and am thinking it's an excellent reason for even highly fortified units intended for garrisons to have at least a small formation intended for front line attack, with tanks or light vehicles being obvious candidates.

Jorgen also brings up a different scenario, where two empires have colonies on the same planet and are at peace, allowing both to fortify their units. If they then go to war, both sides are fortified and have little reason to give it up - there's an interesting balance discussion to be had here but I think it might be best to wait and see how things work out with the current rules.

since hit points associate pretty closely with armor, (infy is 2/1, tanks are 4/4 6/6 or 9/12) and have interchangeable effects, a lot of pen/ damage combos seem to be pretty worthless.  i mean, when you mount a heavy autocannon, exactly what target are you wishing for?  having hit points be warhammer-style "wounds" instead of "toughness" is probably too big a change, but maybe have some interaction between penetration/ damage and fortification?  just throwing this out there, you've already got a collateral damage mechanic, maybe have entrenchment levels of the unit you're shooting at be a likely target of the collateral?

Keep in mind that you can use less than the maximum amount of armor for a unit. You'll probably want to do this for units where cost is a concern - colonial garrisons being an obvious candidate to me, but I'm sure people will find roles for cheaper units. So if I were to say, have a formation of mostly cheap infantry (1/1) with some cheap static anti-tank guns (1/3), then a light autocannon (1.2/2) or medium bombardment (1.5/3) lines up pretty well.

Weapons with high AP and low damage made sense as hybrid weapons when the comparison of damage to HP was linear (that is, 1 damage against 4 hp was a 1/4 chance of a kill, instead of 1/16 as it is now) since 3 1 damage shots had the same chance to kill a heavy tank as 1 3 damage shot, but could kill 3x more infantry. That has since changed, but I don't know if the stats on weapons like the heavy autocannon have.

[misanthropope]

steve, "many small formations" only works if, *after* accepting an automatic second attack each battle round, *after* adjusting for the possibility you get kicked in the rear (echelon), if your targets are so small that i am _still_ wasting some of my offensive potential.  iow, your formations need to be appreciably smaller than _half_ of what my big formations can kill in a single battle round.  I may be mis-estimating the lethality of combat but i don't think you've got a very effective counterweight to Stack O Death TM. 

Without a significant rework, i think you need to control pretty carefully the way HQ and commander traits determine maximum formation size. 

I have some ideas; i'll pass them along in a word doc so they're more convenient to ignore.  don't want to be That Guy From the Internet, ya know.

[Steve Walmsley]

steve, "many small formations" only works if, *after* accepting an automatic second attack each battle round, *after* adjusting for the possibility you get kicked in the rear (echelon), if your targets are so small that i am _still_ wasting some of my offensive potential.  iow, your formations need to be appreciably smaller than _half_ of what my big formations can kill in a single battle round.  I may be mis-estimating the lethality of combat but i don't think you've got a very effective counterweight to Stack O Death TM. 

Without a significant rework, i think you need to control pretty carefully the way HQ and commander traits determine maximum formation size. 

I have some ideas; i'll pass them along in a word doc so they're more convenient to ignore.  don't want to be That Guy From the Internet, ya know.

Before you go into too much detail, bear in mind that the AI won't be using either the stack of death or a lot of tiny formations. The ground combat is detailed so that players can role-play a huge variety of ground force formations, rather than find the most efficient formation size for any given situation. So far I have designed small formations such as a Space Marine Platoon or an SS Panzerkompanie and large formations such as an Imperial Guard regiment, but none of those were designed purely with formation size as a goal in itself. They were just intended to match the genre of the campaign.

If it turns out to be correct that the best strategy is one massive formation or many tiny formations, the only person who can choose to use that 'exploit' is the player and TBH that doesn't sound like much fun, so I don't expect it will be a major issue.

At the moment, the area I might change is the 'two fortified armies fighting' situation. I need to give it a lot more thought though.

[Jorgen_CAB]

steve, "many small formations" only works if, *after* accepting an automatic second attack each battle round, *after* adjusting for the possibility you get kicked in the rear (echelon), if your targets are so small that i am _still_ wasting some of my offensive potential.  iow, your formations need to be appreciably smaller than _half_ of what my big formations can kill in a single battle round.  I may be mis-estimating the lethality of combat but i don't think you've got a very effective counterweight to Stack O Death TM. 

Without a significant rework, i think you need to control pretty carefully the way HQ and commander traits determine maximum formation size. 

I have some ideas; i'll pass them along in a word doc so they're more convenient to ignore.  don't want to be That Guy From the Internet, ya know.

Before you go into too much detail, bear in mind that the AI won't be using either the stack of death or a lot of tiny formations. The ground combat is detailed so that players can role-play a huge variety of ground force formations, rather than find the most efficient formation size for any given situation. So far I have designed small formations such as a Space Marine Platoon or an SS Panzerkompanie and large formations such as an Imperial Guard regiment, but none of those were designed purely with formation size as a goal in itself. They were just intended to match the genre of the campaign.

If it turns out to be correct that the best strategy is one massive formation or many tiny formations, the only person who can choose to use that 'exploit' is the player and TBH that doesn't sound like much fun, so I don't expect it will be a major issue.

At the moment, the area I might change is the 'two fortified armies fighting' situation. I need to give it a lot more thought though.

I was just about to comment something along those lines myself. As in a few other areas of the game there have always been ways to "break" it. As a player you can just ignore these and dictate what works and don't work in your universe.

As for the two armies on fortified position the easiest way to do this I think would be to have a flag if you are defending or attacking on that world. If both are defending then there are no ground combat other than some type of air to ground strikes or space to ground bombardment going on. If you put your armies on attack then all your units in defensive line get a reduction of its fortification level on 75% and a to hit penalty of 50% (or just a 90% to hit penalty to defensive line perhaps) while the defender fight as per the normal rules in both offensive and defensive line.

Then allow air to ground and space to ground bombardment to degrade enemy fortification over time, could take considerable time but eventually you can attack and win that way.

This also would make ground fighters and space bombardment a really important part of ground warfare. But the AI also would need to know when to attack, defend or when to wait for attrition by air-power or space bombardment.


It should make it possible to actually defend and you would need a considerable effort to win when both sides are fortified in the same place.

As the mechanic are right now it is possible for me to "simulate" it by only allow either side to put troops in either Offensive or Defensive line depending on who is attacking or defending, but it is not an optimal solution but doable. So no need to go crazy on this if it means taking allot of coding time away from a releasable version in my opinion.

[Borealis4x]

Sorry if this was asked or clarified already, but is there a way to model the base combat abilities of different species? For instance, having an Ork be stronger and bigger than a human.

Similarly, is there a way to make "genetic super-soldiers" like SPARTANS that have greater base abilities but are made from humans?

[JustAnotherDude]

There's a genetic modification option for infantry, and nothing for different species atm.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sorry if this was asked or clarified already, but is there a way to model the base combat abilities of different species? For instance, having an Ork be stronger and bigger than a human.

I probably would give Orks a lower species score for Ground Combat in Aurora terms than humans because intelligence and fine motor skills probably are way more important for war than strength. 

[Bremen]

Sorry if this was asked or clarified already, but is there a way to model the base combat abilities of different species? For instance, having an Ork be stronger and bigger than a human.

I probably would give Orks a lower species score for Ground Combat in Aurora terms than humans because intelligence and fine motor skills probably are way more important for war than strength. 

I suppose there could be separate multipliers for "ground combat effectiveness" and "ground combat cost". Necrons? Extremely high effectiveness, high cost. Orks, err, sorry,
"Rakhas", poor but not horrible effectiveness, extremely low cost

I think these are all more in the realm of possible future changes, though.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Orks probably would not even make for a coherent regular Aurora empire species, they would be much better fitted with some Marauder special NPC who raid other empires for resources and technology. They would not actually take planets, just invade and loot them and then leave as fast as they turned up.

Give them some special technology to move between systems in a different way so their scrapyard armadas show up, attack and raid anywhere... would be pretty scary. 

[Steve Walmsley]

Orks, err, sorry, "Rakhas"

I thought someone as geeky as myself would have picked this up by now but...

Rakhas means Orcs, but in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves of Middle-Earth

Was that just going a nerd-step too far?

[Bremen]

Orks probably would not even make for a coherent regular Aurora empire species, they would be much better fitted with some Marauder special NPC who raid other empires for resources and technology. They would not actually take planets, just invade and loot them and then leave as fast as they turned up.

Give them some special technology to move between systems in a different way so their scrapyard armadas show up, attack and raid anywhere... would be pretty scary. 

I'd love to see a special spoiler race that just has a chance to spawn light forces from any unexplored jump points and would try to loot your planets and then vanish back into those JPs, as a motivation for surveying out further and defending all of your perimeter worlds instead of stacking everything in one death fleet. Sort of a pirate/raider faction, but not meant to necessarily be members of your own race. However, this might not fit well with the more simulationist nature of Aurora, since you could never really run them down or find their shipyards.

Though in this case I meant Orks as referring to, as Steve notes, the new spoiler race.

[JustAnotherDude]

Orks, err, sorry, "Rakhas"

I thought someone as geeky as myself would have picked this up by now but...

Rakhas means Orcs, but in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves of Middle-Earth

Was that just going a nerd-step too far?

That's great, never even suspected! I know a little Black Speech and Sindarin but never picked up any of the few Khuzdul phrases. Huge nerd cred from me.

[Alsadius]

Orks, err, sorry, "Rakhas"

I thought someone as geeky as myself would have picked this up by now but. . .

Rakhas means Orcs, but in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves of Middle-Earth

Was that just going a nerd-step too far?

No such thing, as long as you're willing to explain it to the rest of us when we miss it the first time


Also, I've been digging into these rules, and I must say, they look really cool.  The interaction between heavier units and heavier weapons is well-done as well - each doubling in damage or penetration quadruples the kill chance, until the point where you max out and it's got no value.  It also seems to basically double the cost (exactly 2x for supply, a little less than 2x for size, and I don't see anywhere that BP cost calcs are posted).  Given that there'll always be a spread of toughnesses of an enemy force, this should help encourage a reasonable mix of weapons.  The use of box launchers to hold fighter pods is ingenious, as well, and really helps weld ground and space into a cohesive whole.  I'll probably dork out and post a TO&E below, but for now let me just give a big thumbs-up. 

[Alsadius]

As promised, I'm dorking out.   

(Edited to add costs, per discussion on the next page)

Unit Designs
Line Infantry[Infantry]: 1x Personal Weapons, size 5, supply 1, cost 0. 1 BP
Machine Gunner[Infantry]: 1x Crew-Served AP, size 12, supply 6, cost 0. 24 BP
Light AT Gun[Infantry]: 1x Light Anti-Vehicle, size 16, supply 6, cost 0. 32 BP
Light Mortar[Infantry]: 1x Light Bombardment, size 20, supply 6, cost 0. 4 BP
Light AA[Infantry]: 1x Light Anti-Aircraft, size 20, supply 2, cost 0. 4 BP

Support Vehicle[Light Vehicle]: 1x Light Autocannon, size 36, supply 7. 5, cost 1. 44 BP
Main Battle Tank[Vehicle]: 1x Heavy Anti-Vehicle, 1x Heavy Crew-Served AP, size 104, supply 45, cost 8. 32 BP
Elite Battle Tank[Super-Heavy Vehicle]: 1x Super-Heavy AV, 2x Heavy Autocannon, size 332, supply 141, cost 59. 76 BP

Brigade AA[Light Vehicle]: 1x Medium AA, size 52, supply 8, cost 2. 08 BP
Brigade Artillery[Light Vehicle]: 1x Medium Bombardment, size 52, supply 18, cost 2. 08 BP
Division AA[Vehicle]: 2x Heavy AA, size 138, supply 36, cost 11. 04 BP
Division Artillery[Vehicle]: 2x Heavy Bombardment: size 138, supply 96, cost 11. 04 BP
Supply Truck[Light Vehicle]: 1x Logistics Module, size 62, cost 2. 48 BP
Engineering Vehicle[Vehicle]: 2x Construction Equipment, size 318, cost 12. 72 BP (assumed light armour, not medium)

Regiment HQ[Medium Vehicle]: HQ size 10k, FFD, size 328, cost 26. 24 BP
Brigade HQ[Heavy Vehicle]: HQ size 50k, FFD, size 596, cost 71. 52 BP
Division HQ[Ultra-Heavy Vehicle]: HQ size 300k, 3x Super-Heavy AV, size 956, supply 243, cost 229. 44 BP


While I know we can have units of arbitrary size now, I feel like 9-10k tons for a regiment is still a good number - they'll fit neatly in most realistic transports, and it matches the Canadian regiment structure(~2000 soldiers) I'll be modelling this around.   This is super-generic, and I'm sure more wrinkles will get added, but it's enough to scratch my designer itch.   

Basic Formation Designs
Infantry Regiment (Front Line)
1x Regiment HQ
36x Machine Gunner
36x Light AT Gun
36x Light Mortar
36x Light AA
1440x Line Infantry
Total size = 9976 tons
Total supply = 2160/round
Total cost = 219. 2 BP

Armor Regiment (Front Line Attack)
1x Regiment HQ
12x Elite Battle Tank
36x Main Battle Tank
54x Support Vehicle
Total size = 10,000 tons
Total supply = 3717/round
Total cost = 1120. 64 BP

Brigade HQ (Support)
1x Brigade HQ
36x Brigade AA
36x Brigade Artillery
90x Supply Truck
Total size = 9920 tons
Total supply = 936/round (provides 45k)
Total cost = 444. 48 BP

Division HQ (Rear)
1x Division HQ
36x Division AA
36x Division Artillery
1080x Supply Truck
60x Engineering Vehicle(fortifies 6000 tons without bonuses)
Total size = 96,932 tons
Total supply = 4752/round (provides 540k)
Total cost = 4465. 92 BP

Formation Structure Designs
Infantry Brigade:
4x Infantry Regiment
1x Brigade HQ
Total size = 49,824 tons
Total supply = 9576/round (provides 45k = 4.  7 rounds)
Total cost = 1321. 28 BP

Armor Brigade:
4x Armor Regiment
1x Brigade HQ
Total size = 49,920 tons
Total supply = 15,804/round (provides 45k = 2.  8 rounds)
Total cost = 4927. 04 BP

Generic Front-Line Division:
2x Infantry Brigade
2x Armor Brigade
1x Division HQ
Total size = 296,420 tons
Total supply = 55,512/round (provides 720k = 13 rounds)
Total cost = 16,962. 56 BP