Figuring out ground unit failure

[Jorgen_CAB]

If you are landing troops on a planet you are way better of putting all your line troops on attack rather than holding some back in defensive line.

The reason is that attacking formation get to use their evasion stat while the defensive only use their fortification stat instead. That means that if you put your infantry in defence they are killed faster rather then if you attack for a very long time before the fortification level becomes stronger than the evasion stat. This will likely take about two weeks of fighting.

Also... defensive line will engage both enemy offensive and defensive line... so too armies that are entrenched can still fight each other without putting any unit on the offensive line.

[Migi]

And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

That's rather unintuitive but useful to know.

Also... defensive line will engage both enemy offensive and defensive line... so too armies that are entrenched can still fight each other without putting any unit on the offensive line.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

[liveware]

And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

That's rather unintuitive but useful to know.

Also... defensive line will engage both enemy offensive and defensive line... so too armies that are entrenched can still fight each other without putting any unit on the offensive line.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

I once landed a company of marines on a precursor world. All were set to front line defense and there was no combat action whatsoever until I set my marines to front line attack.

[Ulzgoroth]

Were there any combat action on the precursor world after you started the attack? When I captured one it had no ground troops.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

Well, if you've booth got diplomacy set to neutral or better I assume you don't fight...

[liveware]

Were there any combat action on the precursor world after you started the attack? When I captured one it had no ground troops.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

Well, if you've booth got diplomacy set to neutral or better I assume you don't fight...

Yes, my marines suffered approximately 50% casualties while combating entrenched hostile combatants.

They were set to hostile also.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

That's rather unintuitive but useful to know.

Also... defensive line will engage both enemy offensive and defensive line... so too armies that are entrenched can still fight each other without putting any unit on the offensive line.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

Even if engineering units helped with self-fortification they could only reduce the time by one production cycle for infantry and static units (7.5 days rounded down).  Vehicles could only benefit by at most ~4.3 days, which rounds down to 0.

I once landed a company of marines on a precursor world. All were set to front line defense and there was no combat action whatsoever until I set my marines to front line attack.

That seems reasonable.  If both sides are dug in and hunkered down then there shouldn't be much for either side to shoot at.  It also means that there is a way to end the fighting without one side needing to be annihilated or driven off-world.

[liveware]

And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

That's rather unintuitive but useful to know.

Also... defensive line will engage both enemy offensive and defensive line... so too armies that are entrenched can still fight each other without putting any unit on the offensive line.

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

Even if engineering units helped with self-fortification they could only reduce the time by one production cycle for infantry and static units (7.5 days rounded down).  Vehicles could only benefit by at most ~4.3 days, which rounds down to 0.

I once landed a company of marines on a precursor world. All were set to front line defense and there was no combat action whatsoever until I set my marines to front line attack.

That seems reasonable.  If both sides are dug in and hunkered down then there shouldn't be much for either side to shoot at.  It also means that there is a way to end the fighting without one side needing to be annihilated or driven off-world.

Seems reasonable yes.

BUT. They weren't interested in talking and I was annoyed by their cultural tradition of using my commercial ships for target practice. So they were removed.

[Droll]

According to what's layed out in the wiki, no matter how much engineering capacity you include you're not going to actually speed up fortification beyond the maximum speed: 30 days to full self-fortification, 90 days from there to maximum fortification. And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

Well thats absolute balls.

I can understand that massive lumbering CON vehicles may not be very useful when you are still at the digging holes and placing sandbags phase but I feel like there needs to be a combat engineer capability or something that can help speed it up.

[liveware]

According to what's layed out in the wiki, no matter how much engineering capacity you include you're not going to actually speed up fortification beyond the maximum speed: 30 days to full self-fortification, 90 days from there to maximum fortification. And for those first 30 days, the construction elements aren't actually doing anything, they only set to work after the self-fortification is complete.

Well thats absolute balls.

I can understand that massive lumbering CON vehicles may not be very useful when you are still at the digging holes and placing sandbags phase but I feel like there needs to be a combat engineer capability or something that can help speed it up.

It would be interesting if there was a commander bonus that affected this. Something like 'reduced fortification time X%' perhaps?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

This can happen if neither side have any troops on Offensive line and one side have all their troops in either rear echelon or support line as Defensive line troops can only attack troops that are at either Defensive or Offensive line.

We have raised this issue before and Steve have acknowledge that this can be a problem, especial for factions that have colonies on the same planet as combat can become way too one sided if both sides start from a defensive dug in position, there are no real way to defend yourself in that case as there are not really any difference between attack and defend in general.

If you play in a multi-faction game where many sides are controlled by you or any other human you can have rules that simulate defensive stance by not allowing troops in defensive line to attack unless both sides attack. If only one side attack they can't have any troops in defensive line (they have to be in support line) while the opponent can't have any in offensive line. That would effectively simulate offensive and defensive conflicts.

When you land on a planet this rarely is a problem... but you might abuse the AI if they don't use any troops in offensive line as you can just wait and have your troops entrench before attacking. It is not unrealistic to do that but it is unrealistic you can use your entrenched units to then devastate the opponent. Instead you should end up in a cold war situation if neither side have the offensive strength to win against the other.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

This can happen if neither side have any troops on Offensive line and one side have all their troops in either rear echelon or support line as Defensive line troops can only attack troops that are at either Defensive or Offensive line.

We have raised this issue before and Steve have acknowledge that this can be a problem, especial for factions that have colonies on the same planet as combat can become way too one sided if both sides start from a defensive dug in position, there are no real way to defend yourself in that case as there are not really any difference between attack and defend in general.

If you play in a multi-faction game where many sides are controlled by you or any other human you can have rules that simulate defensive stance by not allowing troops in defensive line to attack unless both sides attack. If only one side attack they can't have any troops in defensive line (they have to be in support line) while the opponent can't have any in offensive line. That would effectively simulate offensive and defensive conflicts.

When you land on a planet this rarely is a problem... but you might abuse the AI if they don't use any troops in offensive line as you can just wait and have your troops entrench before attacking. It is not unrealistic to do that but it is unrealistic you can use your entrenched units to then devastate the opponent. Instead you should end up in a cold war situation if neither side have the offensive strength to win against the other.

The AI not putting troops on the offensive line while an invasion is in progress could be considered a bug.  Inability to de-escalate in a shared homeworld situation without pulling troops off the defensive line could also be considered a bug.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Is it possible to get a situation where both sides stare at each other and don't attack? IIRC that situation occurred in Steve's Crusade game.
Would one side being in front line defence and the other in support/rear make that happen?

This can happen if neither side have any troops on Offensive line and one side have all their troops in either rear echelon or support line as Defensive line troops can only attack troops that are at either Defensive or Offensive line.

We have raised this issue before and Steve have acknowledge that this can be a problem, especial for factions that have colonies on the same planet as combat can become way too one sided if both sides start from a defensive dug in position, there are no real way to defend yourself in that case as there are not really any difference between attack and defend in general.

If you play in a multi-faction game where many sides are controlled by you or any other human you can have rules that simulate defensive stance by not allowing troops in defensive line to attack unless both sides attack. If only one side attack they can't have any troops in defensive line (they have to be in support line) while the opponent can't have any in offensive line. That would effectively simulate offensive and defensive conflicts.

When you land on a planet this rarely is a problem... but you might abuse the AI if they don't use any troops in offensive line as you can just wait and have your troops entrench before attacking. It is not unrealistic to do that but it is unrealistic you can use your entrenched units to then devastate the opponent. Instead you should end up in a cold war situation if neither side have the offensive strength to win against the other.

The AI not putting troops on the offensive line while an invasion is in progress could be considered a bug.  Inability to de-escalate in a shared homeworld situation without pulling troops off the defensive line could also be considered a bug.

It is not as much a bug as it is a design flaw with the system... the system have no real concept of attack and defence as it is just all pure "fighting" as both sides always fight on equal terms given they had enough time to fortify their forces.

If two sides have their troops fortified then the one with just a slight advantage will win in a fight between them, you don't need a considerable advantage to attack someone who just want's to defend their territory. If the ground combat was designed from more realistic perspective you should probably need somewhere between 2-3 times the force disparity to beat someone on equal terms even if you both are fortified. But that is not how the game work unless you control both sides, then you can make the game behave like that.

In my opinion the easiest fix would be that defensive line only engages enemy attacking line unless you have a certain proportion of your line units on attack rather than defence.

Let's say that you and your enemy need to have at least 1/3 of both sides line troops on attack line before any of your defensive line troops can engage the enemy defensive troops at all. Otherwise they only engage troops in attacking line. So you can have a small proportion of your troops attacking without endanger your whole army but if you commit enough then both sides get drawn into a huge melee. If you then withdraw all your attacking forces into defensive stance you remove the option for enemy defensive line to do any damage at you at all and they have to rely on attacking forces only.

This way you would get a more natural attack versus defence feel in the game that make more sense... attacking would also need an overwhelmingly large numbers or technological advantage to succeed (or both).

In addition to this I only think that a certain size of troops only should be able to face of against a maximum enemy size and this should depend on both terrain and colony size. The more developed a planet is the more difficult it should be to overwhelm a garrison force as the infrastructure will prevent it in it self.

It would produce more realistic large wars that could potentially drag out for a really long time as it should. Both terrain and infrastructure might make large scale wars less bloody as well and simple take allot more time to conclude. The more forces involved on both sides the longer the conflict should take. Storming a military outpost on a barren moon in a few days is one thing but invading a 4 billion population world defended with half or more a dozen divisions is a completely different scenario.

[Droll]

In addition to this I only think that a certain size of troops only should be able to face of against a maximum enemy size and this should depend on both terrain and colony size. The more developed a planet is the more difficult it should be to overwhelm a garrison force as the infrastructure will prevent it in it self.

A combat width mechanic based on tonnage (affected by stuff like terrain still) would be very interesting, It would also put more emphasis on having a more in-depth OOB since small formations would have an easier time joining/reinforcing the fight.

I also think that a counter to the attacker fortification problem is to use fortification levels below 1.
Consider using orbital drop pods in your transports - this option exists to protect your transports as it allows them to just dump all ground units at once, however you could make it so that every unit that is dropped this way starts at 0.5 fortification due to how disorganized the troops are in the initial landing, you could also have a commander skill for landing which makes these units start at higher fortification.
This does 2 things:
The defender is incentivized to put some of their units on frontline attack as now is the time where the attackers are at their most vulnerable and where most of their casualties will be.
The attacker is incentivized to not immediately charge in and wait for their troops to establish an actual "beachhead", getting their fortification up to at least 1 before pushing on.

This also means that there is an additional emphasis on STO protection. You could make it so that the fortification penalty does not apply when troops are unloaded from the transport bays normally. Ofc this means that the transports have to linger around STO range for much longer and troops might be coming in piece-meal.
So now defenders are encouraged to have more STO units in order to force an attacker to face the fortification penalty or for them weather the STO storm on their transports.

IMO right now planetary landings are just made too easy because of the drop pods, fast, armored/shielded transports almost completely nullify any benefit STOs give to a defense beyond preventing orbital bombardment. The initial landing should be the bloodiest part of the fight for the attacker and right now it isn't any deadlier than the rest of the fight.

Since this is a very defender-centric suggestion I think there should be some form of combat engineer capability for infantry that speeds up the rate of self-fortification which helps the attacker get over the initial drop phase quicker.

[liveware]

In addition to this I only think that a certain size of troops only should be able to face of against a maximum enemy size and this should depend on both terrain and colony size. The more developed a planet is the more difficult it should be to overwhelm a garrison force as the infrastructure will prevent it in it self.

A combat width mechanic based on tonnage (affected by stuff like terrain still) would be very interesting, It would also put more emphasis on having a more in-depth OOB since small formations would have an easier time joining/reinforcing the fight.

I also think that a counter to the attacker fortification problem is to use fortification levels below 1.
Consider using orbital drop pods in your transports - this option exists to protect your transports as it allows them to just dump all ground units at once, however you could make it so that every unit that is dropped this way starts at 0.5 fortification due to how disorganized the troops are in the initial landing, you could also have a commander skill for landing which makes these units start at higher fortification.
This does 2 things:
The defender is incentivized to put some of their units on frontline attack as now is the time where the attackers are at their most vulnerable and where most of their casualties will be.
The attacker is incentivized to not immediately charge in and wait for their troops to establish an actual "beachhead", getting their fortification up to at least 1 before pushing on.

This also means that there is an additional emphasis on STO protection. You could make it so that the fortification penalty does not apply when troops are unloaded from the transport bays normally. Ofc this means that the transports have to linger around STO range for much longer and troops might be coming in piece-meal.
So now defenders are encouraged to have more STO units in order to force an attacker to face the fortification penalty or for them weather the STO storm on their transports.

IMO right now planetary landings are just made too easy because of the drop pods, fast, armored/shielded transports almost completely nullify any benefit STOs give to a defense beyond preventing orbital bombardment. The initial landing should be the bloodiest part of the fight for the attacker and right now it isn't any deadlier than the rest of the fight.

Since this is a very defender-centric suggestion I think there should be some form of combat engineer capability for infantry that speeds up the rate of self-fortification which helps the attacker get over the initial drop phase quicker.

I like both the combat width based on tonnage concept and the reduced fortification for attacking troops concept as stated here. You should add this to the suggestions thread/forum.