C# Ground Combat

[Garfunkel]

You're running into the simulationist vs gamist problem, that all strategy games grapple with. What you're asking for is actually a gamist solution. Infantry assigned to artillery don't actually protect it except against other infantry, and they will make it an easier target to hit because you have more "stuff" to destroy. Same with armoured/mechanized infantry - while the grunts and the vehicles can work well together, they are also both vulnerable to enemy fire.

The current system is actually surprisingly simulationist even though it's relatively simple.

[Jorgen_CAB]

You're running into the simulationist vs gamist problem, that all strategy games grapple with. What you're asking for is actually a gamist solution. Infantry assigned to artillery don't actually protect it except against other infantry, and they will make it an easier target to hit because you have more "stuff" to destroy. Same with armoured/mechanized infantry - while the grunts and the vehicles can work well together, they are also both vulnerable to enemy fire.

The current system is actually surprisingly simulationist even though it's relatively simple.

That is the exact opposite of what I try to do... it is to strengthen the simulation not reduce it. The current state are more gamey if you ask me in that respect.

My intent with formation is to make it possible for the infantry to ACTUALLY protect the artillery... there are no way to do this from a math perspective as it is always better to put the infantry on the front not at the rear with the artillery to protect it from any breakthroughs. That is sort of how it works in real life, you don't keep all your combat troops at the front for many different reasons.

[Hazard]

IIRC the selection of which formation gets attacked is random with a few specific exceptions (counter battery duty artillery always hits artillery formations that fired that round and are in range and SEAD missions by fighters always target AA units). Because of this, if you put a combat formation on the Support or Rear Echelon line any unit breaking through can select that combat formation instead of a support formation. Give your support formations the 'Avoid Combat' trait and they count for 1/5th the listed size when it comes to target selection for attack, although they also take penalties when engaged directly.

[Garfunkel]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you Jorgen and misanthropope.

Currently, your artillery unit in the Rear/Support echelon is pretty safe from enemy units until your Front echelon breaks. You can safely put as many infantry with your artillery as you like, it makes little difference. From Steve:

Hostile formations are checked for their weighted size.  This is based on actual size for front line size, 25% for support and 5% for rear-echelon. Each hostile formation is given a range for potential selection, based on its weighted size.

Each front line friendly formation randomly targets a hostile formation. Friendly units with front line defence can target hostile front line formations. Friendly units with front line attack can target any hostile formation, although support and rear echelon are less likely given their smaller weighted size. In fact, the more formations that are pushed into front line positions, the less likely it is that rear areas will be attacked.

So your Support echelon artillery unit (light and medium) has to be 4x as large as any individual Front echelon unit to be as likely to get targeted by enemy attacker than your Front echelon unit if you're on the defence. And even then, if you have more Front echelon units, their combined chance  to get selected will most likely "lure" the enemy away from your artillery. If your artillery unit is Rear echelon (heavy and long), it has be to 20x as large as Front echelon unit! If you're the attacker, then your Support and Rear echelons are completely safe. Except for enemy bombardment units and fighters of course.

Which means that you have lot of space to pack PWL infantry into the artillery unit before you're making that unit significantly likelier to get hit. And if it does get hit, there's then a higher chance that the PWL infantry are struck instead of the cannons.

So if you're the defender and you have a 250 ton Front unit and a 1000 ton Support unit and nothing else on a planet, then it's 50/50 chances of which one gets hit. But if you have four 250 ton Front units and a single 1000 ton Support unit, the odds are 75/25 for Front echelon units. And since tanks will be just as big if not bigger than artillery, your front line units will both be bigger and more numerous than your support/rear units, most likely.

So yeah adding 5000 tons of meat shields to your 5000 ton artillery unit does not make it twice as likely to get hit. It makes it somewhat more likely to get hit but without knowing what your front line echelon units - attack & defence - look like, the actual odds are impossible to calculate. But they aren't as bad as you make them out to be.

Having said that, while that meat shield would be somewhat useful in a breakthrough situation, the problem is that for that to happen, your Front echelon needs to be pretty badly shredded or outnumbered in the first place, meaning that you would probably have been better off in putting that 5000 tons of PWL infantry into the front line unit instead or artillery, where they could have held out longer.

That is sort of how it works in real life, you don't keep all your combat troops at the front for many different reasons.

Aurora doesn't model operational level for ground combat. We jump from strategic level straight into tactical level. On tactical level, infantry does not protect artillery in real life. For infantry to have meaningful protection in the current model, you would need to include some sort gamist"special ability" that forces enemy to target your infantry instead of your artillery. Or Steve would need to include operational level into the ground combat model, which I doubt he is interested in.

Maybe one day TOAW3 will become open-source and someone will integrate it into Aurora 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you Jorgen and misanthropope.

Currently, your artillery unit in the Rear/Support echelon is pretty safe from enemy units until your Front echelon breaks. You can safely put as many infantry with your artillery as you like, it makes little difference. From Steve:

Hostile formations are checked for their weighted size.  This is based on actual size for front line size, 25% for support and 5% for rear-echelon. Each hostile formation is given a range for potential selection, based on its weighted size.

Each front line friendly formation randomly targets a hostile formation. Friendly units with front line defence can target hostile front line formations. Friendly units with front line attack can target any hostile formation, although support and rear echelon are less likely given their smaller weighted size. In fact, the more formations that are pushed into front line positions, the less likely it is that rear areas will be attacked.

So your Support echelon artillery unit (light and medium) has to be 4x as large as any individual Front echelon unit to be as likely to get targeted by enemy attacker than your Front echelon unit if you're on the defence. And even then, if you have more Front echelon units, their combined chance  to get selected will most likely "lure" the enemy away from your artillery. If your artillery unit is Rear echelon (heavy and long), it has be to 20x as large as Front echelon unit! If you're the attacker, then your Support and Rear echelons are completely safe. Except for enemy bombardment units and fighters of course.

Which means that you have lot of space to pack PWL infantry into the artillery unit before you're making that unit significantly likelier to get hit. And if it does get hit, there's then a higher chance that the PWL infantry are struck instead of the cannons.

So if you're the defender and you have a 250 ton Front unit and a 1000 ton Support unit and nothing else on a planet, then it's 50/50 chances of which one gets hit. But if you have four 250 ton Front units and a single 1000 ton Support unit, the odds are 75/25 for Front echelon units. And since tanks will be just as big if not bigger than artillery, your front line units will both be bigger and more numerous than your support/rear units, most likely.

So yeah adding 5000 tons of meat shields to your 5000 ton artillery unit does not make it twice as likely to get hit. It makes it somewhat more likely to get hit but without knowing what your front line echelon units - attack & defence - look like, the actual odds are impossible to calculate. But they aren't as bad as you make them out to be.

Having said that, while that meat shield would be somewhat useful in a breakthrough situation, the problem is that for that to happen, your Front echelon needs to be pretty badly shredded or outnumbered in the first place, meaning that you would probably have been better off in putting that 5000 tons of PWL infantry into the front line unit instead or artillery, where they could have held out longer.

That is sort of how it works in real life, you don't keep all your combat troops at the front for many different reasons.

Aurora doesn't model operational level for ground combat. We jump from strategic level straight into tactical level. On tactical level, infantry does not protect artillery in real life. For infantry to have meaningful protection in the current model, you would need to include some sort gamist"special ability" that forces enemy to target your infantry instead of your artillery. Or Steve would need to include operational level into the ground combat model, which I doubt he is interested in.

Maybe one day TOAW3 will become open-source and someone will integrate it into Aurora 

You don't have to just break through to hit support and rear echelon forces. Attacking forces have always a chance to hit the rear and echelon their size just count for less. That usually means that putting infantry in the support section will increase the chance of them being hit in the first place every round. If you put them in the front they actually protect the rear and echelon allot more.
Even if you only count break through as a chance you are still better of putting the infantry in the defensive front line... they will do damage to the enemy and will still make break through in general less likely AND as I said above defend rear/support units better.

Even if you can make a formation 1/5 less likely to attack that does not make infantry better in the rear as they still protect better at the front. Just add them to the front in relatively large formations so the enemy can't break through them so easily. Then use the 1/5 rule on the most important rear formations... don't remember what the rule for this was, but I was under the impression this was mainly for supply forces. Artillery should not be able to use it if they want to attack at all if I understand. So you would only set formations with no combat abilities what so ever... or?!?

The only reason for using small garrison platoons in with your artillery formation will be role-play the way I see it...

If we instead could put a few platoons of infantry to protect the artillery and make it allot less likely the artillery is hit instead of the protecting platoon, like a 1/10 chance to hit the artillery instead of the infantry platoon, then it would make sense to attach some infantry to defend the artillery.

You would do the same thing with infantry mounted in light vehicle AFV. When the AFV is attacked by an anti-vehicle weapon there is a higher chance you hit the infantry instead and if the formation is attacked with small arms fire there should be a much higher chance the vehicle is hit instead. This would be because the units are working as one entity which is stronger then they are separately. This would make mechanized infantry very effective at protecting tanks in offensive operations and you might have some interactione between heavh vehicle and mechanize vehicle on the offensive.

You also could add in mobility as both offensive and defensive abilities as well. Mobility is a very strong multiplier in a war as the side with higher mobility can shift forces to be where they need to be when they need to be there and make a smaller force seem much larger than it really is.

Having air superiority also should hamper the enemy mobility and thus reduce their offensive and/or defensive capacity.

It would also be MUCH worse to have mobility disadvantage if you are on the offensive than defensive. Having a defending army who are able to out deploy you is always a disaster.

And as I said before there need to be a better distinction between defender and attacker, there currently is none unless the scenario is someone attacking a planet while the other is already entrenched there.

[Garfunkel]

Your problem is that you're mixing up tactical and operational things together. C# ground combat does not model operational level at all, only tactical level - where each formation shoots at each other. At the tactical level, an infantry platoon is not going to protect an artillery battery at all and no army organizes itself in that manner. The gunners are on their own - infantry protects artillery by preventing the enemy from ever reaching the artillery in the first place - but that's operational level and Aurora doesn't do that at all.

You don't have to just break through to hit support and rear echelon forces. Attacking forces have always a chance to hit the rear and echelon their size just count for less

Yes, exactly as I said in my post and the quote from Steve. But both Support echelon and Rear echelon units are counted significantly smaller than their real size. I gave you numbers and all.

That usually means that putting infantry in the support section will increase the chance of them being hit in the first place every round

Not really because the difference is so huge - 25% for Support echelon and 5% for Rear echelon. Sure, going from 100 tons to 125 tons is an increase but if your Front echelon is 15 units each 1200 tons or more, then the odds have not really been changed in any significant manner.

If you put them in the front they actually protect the rear and echelon allot more

Yes, this has not been in dispute and it's how it should be.

Even if you can make a formation 1/5 less likely to attack that does not make infantry better in the rear as they still protect better at the front.

That's a different argument and different calculation - you're mixing two things together that should not be mixed together.

The only reason for using small garrison platoons in with your artillery formation will be role-play the way I see it...

Yes and not much of that either because AFAIK no army puts "garrison platoons" with artillery.

If we instead could put a few platoons of infantry to protect the artillery and make it allot less likely the artillery is hit instead of the protecting platoon, like a 1/10 chance to hit the artillery instead of the infantry platoon, then it would make sense to attach some infantry to defend the artillery.

I think you've been carried away by your own argument. There is a reason to attach PWL/PW infantry to artillery, but that reason isn't so overwhelmingly strong that it would be mandatory.

I'll repeat the mechanics here because I have a feeling that people have forgotten how it works. There are two, entirely separate calculations:

1) The odds of each enemy formation attacking your artillery formation
2) The odds of attacking enemy formation firing at your cannons instead of anything else inside your artillery formation

So first, let's look at the odds. I'll use Steve's WH40k units as examples. His IG Brigade is 5268 tons, whereas the four regiments are 6738, 5546, 6882 and 8942 tons respectively. And remember that Steve's brigade includes HG and AAA units in addition to artillery, plus some guardsmen and supply trucks. A pure artillery unit would actually be slightly smaller. The regiments will be in Front Defensive echelon while the brigade will be in Support echelon. So when each enemy formation rolls for target, they choose between:
8942
6882
6738
5546
1317 (that's 25% of 5268 tons)

I'm not sure how exactly Aurora does the calculation but I'm going to assume that it's similar to how internal damage is allocated in a ship, meaning that all component sizes are compared to each other and then a roll is made against them. The easiest way to illustrate this is with an Excel chart:



You can see how vanishingly small the odds are that the support brigade is going to get hit.


Now we get to the second calculation. Still using the same example, we get the following sizes:
36x artillery 2592 tons
12x anti-air 1176 tons
2x headquarters 1000 tons
100x infantry 500 tons

AFAIK, the attacking formation then has each of its constituent units shoot at the various units inside the defending formation and the calculation is done in the same manner, leading us to this:


The 100 Guardsmen Steve put into the Brigade isn't going to make much of a difference, true. But we could double their size without really affecting the first calculation. In fact, if we increase the infantry five times so that it matches the artillery at 2500 tons, that's still only an increase of 500 tons in the first calculation - not much of a chance there.

Summa summarum - I don't think that you should worry about it. It is far more important to avoid your Support and Rear echelon units getting hit in the first place but if you want to play it safe and have cannon fodder/meat shield protecting your artillery (or other high-value units) then you can do so without significantly increasing their risk of getting hit in the first place.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Hummm... I must have been dreaming of all the MG nests that was used to protect artillery positions in WW2?!?!  Artillery regiments had allot of machine guns for the sole purpose of defending the formation, sometimes it came from the MG or AA companies. So this was done... I'm pretty sure there are dedicated defence formation in modern armies too, they just work a bit differently.

In Aurora the "protection" might not be MG nests but more of an operational protection, but the troops are NOT at the front line. As far as I'm aware all modern forces have what is called rear area security forces whose job is to make the area behind the front elements secure so front elements have a safe zone to operate within and keep a defence in depth to protect support elements. So obviously they don't use the same tactics today as in WW2 but they serve the same purposes.

And no... it is NEVER useful to put infantry in support echelon...

1. They NEVER get to fire their weapons (EVER!!!)

2. Let's say you have 10 infantry regiment with a width of 20 and two artillery regiments also with a width of 20... just to make a point. If you put the artillery in support echelon they get a width of 5 (25% of the front) so the total width of the formation is 210, that give you a chance of 2/42 that any of the artillery regiment is targeted instead of an infantry regiment.
Now, let's assume you put one of the regiment in support echelon... you now have a total width of 9*20 plus 3*5 which is 195... suddenly the chance that any attack hit the artillery is 2/39. In this case you not only lost some of your offensive power you also made the artillery easier to hit and the enemy a greater chance for a breakthrough as you have less forces in the front (more likely they hit the same formation multiple times).

Please correct me if I'm wrong... I might be...

[SevenOfCarina]

A quick fix might be to allow ground formations to 'guard' other formations in the same battlefield position. A formation assigned to 'protect' another formation will not be able to attack, irrespective of where it is positioned.

Let us say an Infantry Company is assigned to protect an Artillery Battery stationed in the support position. If the artillery is attacked in this situation, the hostile forces will instead first have to engage the infantry and the artillery will be unharmed till the hostiles break through the infantry. The rules for a breakthrough will be the same as the present rules for breaking through the frontlines.

[Jorgen_CAB]

A quick fix might be to allow ground formations to 'guard' other formations in the same battlefield position. A formation assigned to 'protect' another formation will not be able to attack, irrespective of where it is positioned.

Let us say an Infantry Company is assigned to protect an Artillery Battery stationed in the support position. If the artillery is attacked in this situation, the hostile forces will instead first have to engage the infantry and the artillery will be unharmed till the hostiles break through the infantry. The rules for a breakthrough will be the same as the present rules for breaking through the frontlines.

A guard mechanic would be nice... if you put a formation using direct fire weapons in support echelon and activate the guard flag there should be a big chance that any attacks targeting a support echelon formation gets rerouted to targeting them instead. But the benefit have to be large enough to counteract the reduced width in the front and the fact they are never going to use their offensive firepower at all. If a support echelon unit is hit which is NOT a guard unit there is a new set of calculations using only the support elements. This way they are twice as effective in that role and then it would make sense to put some units in support and rear echelon to protect your otherwise more expensive and high value targets.

You also could have a trait which you can give troops that makes them more effective guards like increasing their width by twice in that second calculation but that comes at a small price making them less effective in the front lines for the invested resources put into them.

This would be an easy way of adding some interesting choices and make things a bit more realistic from a simulation perspective.

[Garfunkel]

Hummm... I must have been dreaming of all the MG nests that was used to protect artillery positions in WW2?!?!  Artillery regiments had allot of machine guns for the sole purpose of defending the formation, sometimes it came from the MG or AA companies. So this was done... I'm pretty sure there are dedicated defence formation in modern armies too, they just work a bit differently.

I'm sorry Jorgen but you were indeed dreaming. One of the best sources for WW2 era Orders of Battle is this website:
http://www.niehorster.org/000_admin/000oob.htm

Using it you can see that artillery regiments did not have any organic infantry (or machineguns or anything) attached to them. The only things they had were (in some cases) anti-aicraft machineguns. Because the divisional artillery was protected by the infantry regiments at the front line. The artillery was still vulnerable for sneaky enemy attacks as well as breakthroughs, air attack, and counter-battery fire. Front line units held in reserve are used to stop breakthroughs and reinforce either success or weakness, depending on national doctrine. They are not kept behind to specifically protect support units.

In Aurora the "protection" might not be MG nests but more of an operational protection, but the troops are NOT at the front line. As far as I'm aware all modern forces have what is called rear area security forces whose job is to make the area behind the front elements secure so front elements have a safe zone to operate within and keep a defence in depth to protect support elements. So obviously they don't use the same tactics today as in WW2 but they serve the same purposes.

Ah, I see where the misconception comes from. Security forces are used to contain and hunt insurgents and partisans and special forces. They are not there to protect artillery against enemy conventional forces. Neither is any military confident that their rear areas are actually secure. Due to increased mobility and operations taking place among large civilian populations, all Western militaries tell their soldiers that there is no secure rear zone anymore. Terms like front line and rear area are falling out of use, being replaced by terms such as area of operations and other similar terms that better describe the more fluid concept of modern battle space.

My point is that what you're asking for would not be an increase in realism. Not for WW2 and not for modernity.

Please correct me if I'm wrong... I might be...

You are wrong because you're still confused about how the target selection calculation happens. You would never ever place an nfantry regiment in the Support echelon. You would place a number of PW/PWL equipped infantry INSIDE the artillery regiment(s). That's what the mechanics are encouraging players to do.

Remember that unit and formation are two distinct categories and that, when determining targets, there are separate calculations for them.

A quick fix might be to allow ground formations to 'guard' other formations in the same battlefield position. A formation assigned to 'protect' another formation will not be able to attack, irrespective of where it is positioned.

I would not like that. What is this magical 'guard' ability and where does it come from? Why would some units have it but not all? Does it require certain technologies to be researched before it becomes available? Can I research another technology to train my attacking troops to neutralise the enemy's 'guard' ability? I should be able to have my fighters specifically target 'guard' units so that I can neutralise them first. How does the 'guard' ability work with counter-battery fire or orbital bombardment?

We can see that once you open the can of worms that is gamist special abilities, there is no end to them. Just think of games like Final Fantasy Tactics or the modern X-Com remake. The current system is fairly elegant in its simplicity and I'm not convinced that any problem with protecting high-value support units actually exists.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Hummm... I must have been dreaming of all the MG nests that was used to protect artillery positions in WW2?!?!  Artillery regiments had allot of machine guns for the sole purpose of defending the formation, sometimes it came from the MG or AA companies. So this was done... I'm pretty sure there are dedicated defence formation in modern armies too, they just work a bit differently.

I'm sorry Jorgen but you were indeed dreaming. One of the best sources for WW2 era Orders of Battle is this website:
http://www.niehorster.org/000_admin/000oob.htm

Using it you can see that artillery regiments did not have any organic infantry (or machineguns or anything) attached to them. The only things they had were (in some cases) anti-aicraft machineguns. Because the divisional artillery was protected by the infantry regiments at the front line. The artillery was still vulnerable for sneaky enemy attacks as well as breakthroughs, air attack, and counter-battery fire. Front line units held in reserve are used to stop breakthroughs and reinforce either success or weakness, depending on national doctrine. They are not kept behind to specifically protect support units.

In Aurora the "protection" might not be MG nests but more of an operational protection, but the troops are NOT at the front line. As far as I'm aware all modern forces have what is called rear area security forces whose job is to make the area behind the front elements secure so front elements have a safe zone to operate within and keep a defence in depth to protect support elements. So obviously they don't use the same tactics today as in WW2 but they serve the same purposes.

Ah, I see where the misconception comes from. Security forces are used to contain and hunt insurgents and partisans and special forces. They are not there to protect artillery against enemy conventional forces. Neither is any military confident that their rear areas are actually secure. Due to increased mobility and operations taking place among large civilian populations, all Western militaries tell their soldiers that there is no secure rear zone anymore. Terms like front line and rear area are falling out of use, being replaced by terms such as area of operations and other similar terms that better describe the more fluid concept of modern battle space.

My point is that what you're asking for would not be an increase in realism. Not for WW2 and not for modernity.

Please correct me if I'm wrong... I might be...

You are wrong because you're still confused about how the target selection calculation happens. You would never ever place an nfantry regiment in the Support echelon. You would place a number of PW/PWL equipped infantry INSIDE the artillery regiment(s). That's what the mechanics are encouraging players to do.

Remember that unit and formation are two distinct categories and that, when determining targets, there are separate calculations for them.

A quick fix might be to allow ground formations to 'guard' other formations in the same battlefield position. A formation assigned to 'protect' another formation will not be able to attack, irrespective of where it is positioned.

I would not like that. What is this magical 'guard' ability and where does it come from? Why would some units have it but not all? Does it require certain technologies to be researched before it becomes available? Can I research another technology to train my attacking troops to neutralise the enemy's 'guard' ability? I should be able to have my fighters specifically target 'guard' units so that I can neutralise them first. How does the 'guard' ability work with counter-battery fire or orbital bombardment?

We can see that once you open the can of worms that is gamist special abilities, there is no end to them. Just think of games like Final Fantasy Tactics or the modern X-Com remake. The current system is fairly elegant in its simplicity and I'm not convinced that any problem with protecting high-value support units actually exists.

In terms of WW2 they often used both and/or MG companies to protect supportive units... some even had machine-guns in the artillery regiments themselves. There are for example some brief mentioning of heavy defences for artillery in this document... https://history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-14-1/cmhPub_104-14-1.pdf. But obviously it is mostly during more static defence operation more elaborate defence is made... but it was quite common to have lighter defence forces to protect artillery positions. It certainly depended on the danger the artillery might find themselves in and less so when a formation is on attack.

**EDIT**
Anouther great source... for example the paper strength of a Japanese artillery regiment in WW2...

The organization of the divisional artillery regiment, war
strength, is generally as shown above:
Notes: 1. The 105-mm. howitzer battalion is organized
similarly to the 75-mm. gun battalion.
2. Combat trains consist of caissons; field trains of twowheeled carts.
3. Regiment contains a total of 105 officers and 2,365
enlisted men.
4. Auxiliary weapons—365 pistols, 152 sabers, 72 LMG's.

https://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/archives/1941/MAR_1941/MAR_1941_FULL_EDITION.pdf
***EDIT***

The type of security forces I was talking about have nothing about insurgency to do... it is also a battlefield term of the elastic forces you use in between the main combat element and the support and HQ elements in a division or brigade. You can look it up...

Not sure if it really matters if the infantry is attached to the artillery formation itself or not... an attack still target the width of the formation and that just make the artillery wider as a target just as if you added the regiment there... it will be the same thing. You still have to determine if an attack hit the infantry or the artillery at the end anyway so I don't see how it makes any difference so far.

***EDIT***
Example 1. 10 regiments width 40 and two Artillery regiments with width 40. Two artillery in support line gives 1/42 chance to hit (10*40+2*10)/10.

Example 2.  9 regiments width 40 and two mixed Infantry/Artillery regiments of width 60 (40 artillery and 20 infantry). The initial selection for formation is 390/15 so a 1/26 chance to hit the support formation. You then check for which unit you hit in each formation using the same weighted chance so there is a 2/3 chance to hit the artillery and 1/3 chance to hit the infantry. That means that the total chance to hit the artillery is still 1/39... or 26*3/2=39. Exactly the same as before.

Mixing on troops in the same formation does not change a thing unless there is something I'm missing in the calculations or how it works. The main advantage of mixing troops in a formation is for it to withstand a breakthrough by the formation being bigger and able to absorb more damage. That is the only benefit that I could see and the only reason to stick some infantry with the artillery as the mechanics stand.
***EDIT***

[xenoscepter]

I've been considering a Self-Propelled Gun formation w/ Medium and Light Vehicles.

The basic element of the formation would consist of:

 - 4x Medium SPG (Crew-Served Anti-Personnel / Medium Bombardment)

 - 3x Light Vehicle (Logistics)

 - 2x Light Vehicle (AA)

The formation would consist of three elements for a total of:

 - 12x Medium SPG

 - 9x Light Logisitcs

 - 6x Light AA

I think that would be a defensible artillery formation.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I've been considering a Self-Propelled Gun formation w/ Medium and Light Vehicles.

The basic element of the formation would consist of:

 - 4x Medium SPG (Crew-Served Anti-Personnel / Medium Bombardment)

 - 3x Light Vehicle (Logistics)

 - 2x Light Vehicle (AA)

The formation would consist of three elements for a total of:

 - 12x Medium SPG

 - 9x Light Logisitcs

 - 6x Light AA

I think that would be a defensible artillery formation.

Using AA weapons in with an artillery formation makes perfect sense to bolster them as those weapons actually can be useful. In WW2 most of the machine guns assigned to them was mainly meant for AA duty even though they often had to serve both in ground and air roles.

[xenoscepter]

Yup. I figure something like the M7 "Priest"; a big gun, a bit o' armor and a HMG to deter infantry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M7_Priest#/media/File:American_tank_M7_105-MM_-_JPG1.jpg


 - AA escort is more of a nice to have than a need in my opinion, as Aerospace superiority is, well... superior. Although I do like the idea of an unarmoured Medium Vehicle with a Light Bombardment module and a Logistics module as a cheap, self-contained, and (mostly) self-sufficient SPG.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yup. I figure something like the M7 "Priest"; a big gun, a bit o' armor and a HMG to deter infantry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M7_Priest#/media/File:American_tank_M7_105-MM_-_JPG1.jpg


 - AA escort is more of a nice to have than a need in my opinion, as Aerospace superiority is, well... superior. Although I do like the idea of an unarmoured Medium Vehicle with a Light Bombardment module and a Logistics module as a cheap, self-contained, and (mostly) self-sufficient SPG.

The only sad thing though is that the Crew-Served Anti-Personnel weapon would never be used as the formation need to be in the front lines for that.