Ground Force Organization

[brondi00 (OP)]

Not sure if this should go in the sticky topic or a new one.   But I made a new one.   

So I've been contemplating the ground force organization possibilities and I think I've come up with something pretty good.   I wanted the community here to look at it and see what you think.   I've played around with lots of different organization strategies and have realized a few things.

1) Aurora adopted the, roughly, 3:1, ratio of officers per rank for ground leaders.   Ground units used to be roughly 4:1, but now its just like the naval officers were in VB.   For example, in my new game, I have 50 captains and 16 majors.   At 51 captains I will trigger the game to promote 1 Captain to Major.   In aurora VB I'd need 64 captains to get 16 majors.   This means, to not have officers sitting around doing nothing, or to not have a massive shortage of high level commanders, I want to keep a roughly 3:1 ratio at each level of Org (ie 3 companies:1 battalion).

2) There are several different ground commander bonuses now that apply to different types of ground unit so commanders are more specialized, potentially.

3) Some units can be held in support or at rear echelon now, so you don't want them on the front line if they don't need to be.   Which means they can't share the same formation as the front line troops.   So I want to separate artillery, for example, from my tanks and infantry.   As above I could also have an artillery commander in charge of this unit while a better ground attack/defense commander has the front line troops.
 
4)  Its pretty easy to design a 50,000 ton troop transport to move people around.    So I've kind of adopted that as a basis for the middle level of organization.   These are commercial transports.   If you want drop pods you will likely need to have a ship for 1-2 batallions (12. 5-25k), as you will see.   For boarding I usually just use company size, or even make a half company of marines (1500-3000).

5) Finally I want the organization to be somewhat realistic, for RP purposes.   So its not a massive wall o text (too late, LOL), I will reply to this with info on each level of organization.

[brondi00 (OP)]

So now on with my organization.

Company/Battery - 3,125 tons - commanded by lowest level officer

This allows a basic separation of support and front line, right here.   It also allows officers with good artillery bonus to command units of nearly pure artillery.   Officers with good maneuver can command mostly tanks, officers with good production can command mostly engineers/construction, etc.

Battalion - 12,500 tons - commanded by next highest officer

3 x companies of 3,125 tons, usually related to what the battalion does.   Artillery, foot, combined arms, engineers, etc

The Battalion itself will contain everything else.   So the battalion formation template is also 3,125 tons.   It contains mostly supplies for the front line troops.   But in this case it will also contain mortars (if it makes sense, like for infantry or tanks).   

See, IRL, many infantry battalions have 4 companies, 3 rifle/motor/mech, and a 4th weapons or support company with mortars, AT, larger MG, and other gear.   Some of that we want on the front line (MG and AT) and some we want in support (mortars and supplies).   I just say put the stuff you want up front with the other 3 companies and put he stuff you want in support with the battalion HQ itself.   So my HQ formation is 3,125 tons, and the HQ is rated to command 12,500 tons.   The HQ formation may contain some artillery, AA, and supplies, unless it is an artillery battalion.   Then it will likely contain mostly just supplies so the artillery can shoot a long time.

[brondi00 (OP)]

The pattern continues:

Regiment/Brigade - 50,000 tons - next highest officer

3 battalions of 12,500 and the HQ of 12,500 that has engineers, L.  Artillery if it isn't an artillery brigade, AA, and supply for everyone below.   Consistent with modern RCT/BCT tactics this can now stand mostly on its own as it has pretty much everything necessary to defend or attack with it if you've done a good mix of units at the company level.   And it fits in one 50,000 ton commercial transport for moving around and in drop ships for landing on planets.

Division - 250,000 tons - next highest officer. 

Now a slight deviation as the unit isn't nearly as specialized a formation.   3 Rgts of whatever front line stuff you want (50,000 each).   Plus an artillery Brigade (50,000), engineer battalion (12,500), and an AA battalion (12500).   

This allows people of higher rank with good construction, artillery, and AA specialization to still have units to command.   This fits in a fleet of 5 transports.   The HQ itself stores nothing but bunches of supplies for the other units.

Now if you want to give the even higher officers something to do you can combine these into:

Corps - 850,000 tons - next highest officer
3 x Division (250,000), plus Hvy Art Brigade (50,000), AA Battalion (12500), Engineer Battalion (12,500).   The difference goes to the HQ to hold even more supplies.   

Finally, if you want, you can have all that united into an Army:

Army - 3,000,000 tons - highest officer

3 x Corps, plus maybe some planetary defense batteries, more supplies, special troops, army level artillery, AA, and Engineers.   I don't think an army or a Corps is ever really necessary, finding guys with that high of a combat command rating is hard anyway.   But its easy to keep stringing this together if you want.   

I don't know if this is helpful but I'm curious what you guys think.   I've tried so many different organizational philosophies, even one based on the band of the red hand.   I think this is the best for RP and gameplay purposes.

[Cinnius]

Can you post some example of your Company/Battery and Battalion?

Anyway, this is a fantastic example, in the next game (1.12 maybe) i will follow a similar logic.

[brondi00 (OP)]

Absolutely.

[brondi00 (OP)]

Here is a Battalion.   Rgt and Division to come also.   

[brondi00 (OP)]

Regiment

[brondi00 (OP)]

Armored Division.

[brondi00 (OP)]

So you can see one armored division has 1 General, 4 Colonel's, 13 Majors, and 39 Captains.   Roughly 3:1 at each level.   Which means I can staff this full division with 57 officers, exactly.   So as soon as I have 57 ground officers I can fully staff 1 division.   

And there is actually room in this division for ~15,000 more tons of stuff (I set the HQ to 250k as I said above).   In my notes I suggested an AA battalion as that would be 12,500 and RP, as it gives the division even more AA.   But maybe it is some special troops you want to attach?  Or more supply?  Or maybe even more armor by attaching a standalone armored battalion?  Or a construction battalion?

It is completely modular.   You decide what each Brig/Rgt, BN, Co/Ba has in it.   The proportions is what matters for gameplay purposes.   Make it all armor if you want.

[Black]

I was looking forward to new ground force possibilities and I went with companies as smallest formation in my first game. But it quickly turned into micromanagement hell for me. Especially as I started to fight against aliens and had to replace loses.

I unfortunately realized that I need rebuild to template command to enjoy company based ground forces. I now do regiments as smallest formation and battalion for specialized formations (heavy AA, engineers), but my regiments are only 16000 tons and even at that I have problem with enough officers. My division has 71000 tons, so army formation of three corps ends at something like 730000 tons. This includes some special elements - like heavy AA battalion, long range artillery or ultra-heavy vehicles (battlemechs in my games).

How do you deal with replacements after the combat? Do you mostly disband the formations or do you go company by company and put new units into them?

Edit: I have lot of officers with command under 3000 tons, what do you do with those?

[brondi00 (OP)]

I tried to go with "realistic" companies at first but they were too small and there were too many layers to manage.    I tried large formations with 10,000 tons as the smallest unit as well.    Shoot I even tried, once, to organize it like the band of the red hand. 

Unfortunately some micromanagement is necessary in Aurora.   

It sounds like ours aren't too dissimilar.    Your Rgt is roughly the size of my BN and your Div is roughly the size of my Rgt.    You just decided to lump all the company functions with the BN.    I did that at one point too but it means things like BN level artillery and supply are hard to do since they are at the front and you don't get commanders with offense, defense, artilery, aa, etc all in one person.    so you miss out on the bonuses. 

The one thing we can definitely agree on is, after the invasion, how do you "repair" all the units?  I am currently thinking of doing a replacement rgt with a few of each unit and a supply battalion to resupply everyone.    I wish there was a simpler way to do this and I hope he is working on it as part of expanding ground combat.    Until then I actually try to avoid ground combat to avoid this.   

This is also what makes upgrading them annoying too.    What happens when you have much better tech and want to replace all your troops with new ones?  There is currently no way to easily redesign everything and then tell it to upgrade.    AFAIK you have to build all new ones and then disband all the old ones.    One at a time. 

As for commanders with really low tonnage?  I don't do anything.    They will still provide a fraction of their boni, in proportion to how over extended they are.    They are not likely to get promoted (game prefers to promote guys with larger numbers) so they will "retire" sooner and leave me alone.    I'm not gonna design my force structure around the edge cases. 

I do have 1/2 companies for marine boarding units.    Or at least I have a plan to do so, but not yet in this game.    Eventually.    The reason for that is you don't actually need that many marines to succeed in a boarding attempt and the assault shuttle needs to be quick (so necessarily small). 

Edit: And when I say this game I don't mean the one I took screenshots of.   That is a cheat game I did just for messing around with different force structures at the naval and army levels.

[Black]

I feel there is bit of a contradiction in C# Aurora for ground formations as we are provided with lot of officers for smaller formations but we lack tools to make it easier to organize them, upgrade them and replenish them after combat. I wonder how some basic NPR formations look like.

Boarding is another thing. I am using small fast shuttles with 250t capacity to capture moving targets and larger ships with 2000t capacity to capture more dangerous targets, like disabled beam ships.

I am actually tempted to try bigger formations for my next game after reading your posts, but I will most likely start at battalions. As the general formations will be bigger I will need less of them.

There is one thing I am not sure how exactly it works. And those are specialized formation, like heavy AA battalion that is directly subordinate of for example division HQ. Does t provide protection for regiments that are subordinate to the division? Or should such unit be integrated directly into the HQ formation? I am using them because it makes sense from RP perspective but I am not sure if it is optimal way.

What do you use as planetary garrison or do you concentrate your forces at key systems and colonies are not protected? I am using Brigades (38000t in total with integrated artillery units and 2 subordinate regiments).

[brondi00 (OP)]

As far as I can tell,  AA specifically follows its own rules.   Based on the wiki, which itself is based on a post from steve:

If the AA is in a unit that was attacked by fighters it will fire on those fighters.

If fighters are there, and its formation wasn't attacked, but it is in a DIRECT parent, and is medium or heavy AA, it will defend that attacked formation below it.   So if you put some med AA in the battalion it will defend the companies.   Or if you put it in the Rgt it will also defend the companies, but only those in its own BN or Rgt.   This is why I wanted med/hvy AA at the BN and Rgt level.   As far as I can tell it would apply to any level, no matter how big or what you named them, as long as they are in a direct chain of command and the AA is above and is Med or Hvy variety.   

Lastly any AA not included in those above will fire on random aircraft that haven't attacked any formation directly.   So there is some, apparently small, utility to having some AA around even if the enemy fighters aren't attacking them and they aren't in a parent formation.   

I use planetary garrisons of light infantry, 3 companies and 1 battalion, usually.   If the place isn't likely to be attacked for RP.   I don't care if they have officers.   They never move after getting placed.   Its a light police force.

For serious defense I am planning to make artillery brigades of nothing but STO units.   Probably mainly laser batteries with some PD battalions sprinkled in, maybe 2 laser battalions and 1 PD batallion per brigade.   No supply, so even the HQ formation will have units.   I'm also considering 3 laser battalions and the HQ formations having the PD.   I can attach those to the division, corps, or army level, or I can just leave them stand alone, since they don't participate with ground fighting.

IRL large batteries like this would usually be attached at the army level but I'm not likely to have many, if any, "army's" based on the structure I already posted.   Its probably going to be mostly regimental or brigade level force.

I am also only planning to have this much defense at major colonies.   Earth is the only one planned at the moment since I'm still mainly in Sol.

[db48x]

I like your organization; you actually put some thought into the size ratio.

A few minutes ago I realized that I had made a horrible blunder in my own game: I put 5 brigades into every battalion!

I had to stop and write some SQL to fix it:

Code: [Select]

UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitClass SET ClassName = replace(ClassName, "Brigade", "Battalion") WHERE FCT_GroundUnitClass.GameID = 35 AND ClassName LIKE '%Brigade HQ%' AND HQCapacity = 1000;
UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitClass SET ClassName = replace(ClassName, "Battalion", "Brigade") WHERE FCT_GroundUnitClass.GameID = 35 AND ClassName LIKE '%Battalion HQ%' AND HQCapacity = 5000;
UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitFormationTemplate SET Name = replace(Name, "Brigade", "Battalion") WHERE RaceID = 197 AND Name LIKE '%Brigade%' AND Abbreviation LIKE 'HA1%';
UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitFormationTemplate SET Name = replace(Name, "Battalion", "Brigade") WHERE RaceID = 197 AND Name LIKE '%Battalion%' AND Abbreviation LIKE 'HA2%';
UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitFormation SET Name = replace(Name, "Brigade", "Battalion") WHERE RaceID = 197 AND Name LIKE '%Brigade%' AND Abbreviation LIKE 'HA1%';
UPDATE FCT_GroundUnitFormation SET Name = replace(Name, "Battalion", "Brigade") WHERE RaceID = 197 AND Name LIKE '%Battalion%' AND Abbreviation LIKE 'HA2%';