Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: January 18, 2021, 11:03:18 AM »To be honest I don't think the AI ever board you...
You might be in for a surprise
To be honest I don't think the AI ever board you...
It's also very useful to chase and board large, slow and rather expensive non-combat ships like gate-builders, terraformers and even cryotransports (colony ships).
I suspect it might be easier to make the case to have a complement of marines on board a ship to help 'repel' enemy boarding attempts.
You need infantry for boarding.
Is it necessary to board? Is there some benefit to boarding other than it being a useful way to end a fight? Does your fleet not need to be purpose-designed to board, meaning containing weapons meant more to disable than to destroy, so you can purchase the opportunity to board?
I suspect it might be easier to make the case to have a complement of marines on board a ship to help 'repel' enemy boarding attempts.
You need infantry for boarding.
Could I get away with my smallest formations being 10,000 tons, or would there be any reason to have some units lower (other than special case utility)?
Do units in lower in the hierarchy stay out of front line combat? Would flagging them with 'avoid combat' keep them from doing so? Or would that mean that the bombardment guns don't fire and the AA guns don't engage fliers?
Ok, beginning to get the picture here. The choices as to whom to attack are literally random, so the infantry might futilely poke at a tank or the heavy gun might waste itself on an infantry.
I think my earlier idea stands, My formation will include infantry, ten or twelve to a tank.
Ok, beginning to get the picture here. The choices as to whom to attack are literally random, so the infantry might futilely poke at a tank or the heavy gun might waste itself on an infantry. Clearly then, defensively you do want infantry to soak fire, basically to just be targets. Offensively then, infantry is also a problem. Investing too much in just tanks means you can't kill the heavy stuff fast enough because you are too busy wasting fire on infantry.
I think my earlier idea stands, My formation will include infantry, ten or twelve to a tank. This will significantly cut down on hits to the tanks, while they last. To counter the opposite problem, my tanks wasting fire on infantry, all my infantry will carry Gattlings (Heavy Crew-Served Anti-Personnel). This way not only are my tanks vastly less likely to get hit, but the enemy infantry won't last long enough to be a hindrance to my tank's fire. The two in combination should make short work, hopefully without too much attrition from my infantry. To make sure my infantry don't die too fast from enemy infantry fire, they will wear the best power armour.
I suppose a case could be made to throw in (in addition) a bunch of unarmored light infantry with light weapons (which would cost virtually nothing), just to do lots of dying. They could soak vast numbers of hits to prevent the Gattling troops from having to soak too much. But here my roleplaying genes kick in to overrule my wargame genes. I am too reluctant to be so wasteful of human life.