Aurora 4x
New Players => C# Tutorials => Topic started by: Garfunkel on April 13, 2020, 06:26:39 PM
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EDIT: a new, improved video with voiceover.
Creating unit types, unit formations and adding elements to the formations, ending with creating an OOB. Using SM mode to instantly research and build them.
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I have a question related to ground force design.
I'm not exactly sure if it's best to integrate support and hq units into my unit design or if it's better to have these roles as separate unit designs.
So, should I, for example add supply trucks to an Infantry Platoon or should I design dedicated supply and HQ units and deploy them alongside my infantry?
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Always tick "Avoid Combat" for both HQ and supply, as well as STO.
The vehicle-based supply unit can supply ANY formation in its chain of command so there is no need to include them at the lowest levels. What I'm doing in the video is to have one set of supplies at the regiment level, and then another set at the division level. These will keep the division fighting at full tempo for a week, which gives me sufficient time to transport more supply trucks to the invasion planet.
However, you don't need to have supply as part of your OOB at all. The units carry some supplies with themselves - certainly, enough for a day of combat - and they can still defend when out of supply. Then you can build pure supply formations that get shipped to wherever they are needed for when you're planning an offensive.
For HQs, the reason to use them is to get to use Ground Commanders and to utilize their bonuses. How intricate your OOB becomes is all up to you - how much micromanagement in designing, building and forming your formations can you stomach? Remember, you have to manually replace all combat losses too.
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I have a question related to ground force design.
I'm not exactly sure if it's best to integrate support and hq units into my unit design or if it's better to have these roles as separate unit designs.
So, should I, for example add supply trucks to an Infantry Platoon or should I design dedicated supply and HQ units and deploy them alongside my infantry?
It largely doesn't matter, as there is not yet any "rebuild to template" functionality.
So, for example, when a PW-INF formation with, say, 20 INF-based Supply members gets into sustained combat and consumes half of them, it will forever more* have only 10 'supply guys'.
In other words, you can add or remove supply at any time and the only things you need to worry about are HQ rating and transport size. Even in the middle of active ground combat you can shuffle surviving supply units from one formation to another
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*so, clearly, NOT forever more, but rather only until you (or combat) make changes.
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The basic trade-off is that vehicle-based supply is less efficient to produce & transport, but infantry-based suply makes the supplied unit 'larger' in combat and thus more likely to be attacked.
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I have a question related to ground force design.
I'm not exactly sure if it's best to integrate support and hq units into my unit design or if it's better to have these roles as separate unit designs.
So, should I, for example add supply trucks to an Infantry Platoon or should I design dedicated supply and HQ units and deploy them alongside my infantry?
It largely doesn't matter, as there is not yet any "rebuild to template" functionality.
So, for example, when a PW-INF formation with, say, 20 INF-based Supply members gets into sustained combat and consumes half of them, it will forever more* have only 10 'supply guys'.
In other words, you can add or remove supply at any time and the only things you need to worry about are HQ rating and transport size. Even in the middle of active ground combat you can shuffle surviving supply units from one formation to another
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*so, clearly, NOT forever more, but rather only until you (or combat) make changes.
= = = = =
The basic trade-off is that vehicle-based supply is less efficient to produce & transport, but infantry-based suply makes the supplied unit 'larger' in combat and thus more likely to be attacked.
I hope that some sort of auto-replenishment becomes a thing in the future. I should be able to replenish all ground forces on a planet with training facilities to template defaults.
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That really should be the case. Steve should look into that after he's dune bug smashing.
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However, you don't need to have supply as part of your OOB at all. The units carry some supplies with themselves - certainly, enough for a day of combat - and they can still defend when out of supply. Then you can build pure supply formations that get shipped to wherever they are needed for when you're planning an offensive.
FWIW, the dev diaries pre-launch said that each unit carries 10 combat ticks of supply, and a ground combat tick is 8 hours. So every unit carries 3 days and 8 hours of supply, before any external supply is added. The GSP value for a formation is the amount required to refill them for the 10 turns, by the way, not the per-turn consumption. Units can also fight while out of supply, but the penalty is pretty brutal (-75%?).
As for the foot logistics, they cost about 60% less (1 BP for 500 supply, instead of 2.48 BP). But they go on the front lines, instead of being held safe, and losing them in combat is kind of lame. In this game, I'm using infantry logistics for my garrisons, but for my attacking units, I'll pay the extra to keep my supply forces safe.
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If you're into that sort of micro-management, there's also the option of having a large pool of supply units and none in your fighting ranks, then after three days of combat parcelling out 'supply guys' to units as necessary. Repeat every three days to minimize the number of supply units that actually end up in the front lines.
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So for non-combat units like construction, survey, and archaeology teams should I include a supply element? Re: are supplies only used for combat? And if I in a moment of weakness I decide to deploy them near the front lines - can I add infantry supply units into those formations post-deployment?
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You can always add and remove elements later.
Supplies are only needed for combat.
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So for non-combat units like construction, survey, and archaeology teams should I include a supply element?
Nope.
Re: are supplies only used for combat?
Yup.
And if I in a moment of weakness I decide to deploy them near the front lines - can I add infantry supply units into those formations post-deployment?
Yup.
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Thanks. I've created a unit with 10 vehicles but forgot to include a HQ element. I was able to create a separate unit with an HQ and 9 more vehicles and I have dragged the first unit as a detachment under the second, but I'd rather directly move vehicles between units - in part because I now have 1 too many vehicles in the formation. Is there a way to do this? And does delete formation return the individual units to some sort of pool that could be used to create another formation? Re: could I delete both formations then create a new formation including all but one of the vehicles?
This will also be relevant later after taking losses from ground combat - I could build a formation designated as combat replacements and then peel units off of this formation to bring the combat formation back up to full power. Otherwise I could see combat line units becoming a tangled nest of replacement sub-formations.
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Easiest way is to open a second Ground Unit window and drag-and-drop between screens.
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There is a "Show Elements" tick box at the top-left of the Ground Unit screen, that should let you drag and drop units between formations.
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Thanks, I missed the show elements checkbox. And also the "Amount popup" checkbox which allows transfer of a partial stack.
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I made an improved video with voice over that's hopefully more clear than the old one:
I edited the first post to link to this one.
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If you're into that sort of micro-management, there's also the option of having a large pool of supply units and none in your fighting ranks, then after three days of combat parcelling out 'supply guys' to units as necessary. Repeat every three days to minimize the number of supply units that actually end up in the front lines.
What I do is keep all supply away from any HQ and ground forces - all supply comes from dedicated logistics battalions each with about 240 supply trucks and nothing else. I simply slot them right under the division and everything in the hierarchy is supplied.
This also makes supply replenishment quite easy since I can just slot in new supply battalions as I run low.
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Does your Division HQ need extra HQ capacity forlogistics battalion or do they not take any HQ capacity when you attach them to division?
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Does your Division HQ need extra HQ capacity forlogistics battalion or do they not take any HQ capacity when you attach them to division?
Everything 'under' an HQ is counted against its capacity. Fortunately, the penalty for going over rate is proportional to the amount by which you go over, so an extra few hundred tons on a 125,000 HQ is barely noticeable.
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Does your Division HQ need extra HQ capacity forlogistics battalion or do they not take any HQ capacity when you attach them to division?
Everything 'under' an HQ is counted against its capacity. Fortunately, the penalty for going over rate is proportional to the amount by which you go over, so an extra few hundred tons on a 125,000 HQ is barely noticeable.
So if I understand correctly, it sounds like there's an advantage to keeping your organization fairly flat. Since every level needs an HQ with enough capacity for all the units under it, an army with many levels of organization is going to need a lot more cumulative HQ capacity than one with just a few levels (or one level).
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Does your Division HQ need extra HQ capacity forlogistics battalion or do they not take any HQ capacity when you attach them to division?
Everything 'under' an HQ is counted against its capacity. Fortunately, the penalty for going over rate is proportional to the amount by which you go over, so an extra few hundred tons on a 125,000 HQ is barely noticeable.
So if I understand correctly, it sounds like there's an advantage to keeping your organization fairly flat. Since every level needs an HQ with enough capacity for all the units under it, an army with many levels of organization is going to need a lot more cumulative HQ capacity than one with just a few levels (or one level).
It is up to you. It still is not clear WHICH HQ commander bonuses count, some say it is top level of the org chart only, others say it is the direct attached, and yet others infer that it stacks like fleets. There is nothing wrong with: BBHQ 50,000 being the only HQ unit in a formation. One can also do BBHQ 50,000, 2xBHQ 25,000, 4xHQ 12,500 which regardless of how HQ bonuses count ensure that your 12,500 will get a command bonus unless all three levels of HQ are taken out.
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So I found this post.
Is there a disadvantage to not having an HQ unit in a small formation? Or does a higher level bonus only apply if a formation has its own commander assigned? With the new HQ change you could conceivably go down to platoon sized or even squad sized formations without wasting HQ capability, but that would eat up a lot of ground commanders and might take a while to fill out the upper levels of your army. Maybe I should just stick with company sized formations. . .
As a side question, are units researched? Or do you just build what ever units you have designed and they get the latest tech levels automatically?
Also, I vaguely remember there was going to be an improved personal weapon for infantry. Did you remove that and I didn't see it or was that just an idea?
You can't assign a commander to a formation without an HQ and you can't pass on higher-formation bonuses to formations without an HQ.
If you gain higher tech, you will need to design and research new units. For example, House Reichmann has a Panzer III, which is a Medium Vehicle with MAV and CAP using base tech 6 armour and 6 weapon. If armour and weapon tech increases to 8, they could create a Panzer III Ausf B with the same components but higher overall capability and update the formation template for the Panzer Kompanie with the new design (so newer formations will incorporate the update design). Existing formations (as in the real world) will retain the older vehicle.
If a unit must have its own HQ to receive parent bonuses, then in that example losing a 12500 HQ would mean that the bottom unit gets no bonuses from anywhere. Similarly, it sounds like losing an HQ in the middle of the chain might separate all its subordinates from the top-level bonuses.
But yes, clarification on what exactly the mechanics are would be helpful.
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So I found this post.
Is there a disadvantage to not having an HQ unit in a small formation? Or does a higher level bonus only apply if a formation has its own commander assigned? With the new HQ change you could conceivably go down to platoon sized or even squad sized formations without wasting HQ capability, but that would eat up a lot of ground commanders and might take a while to fill out the upper levels of your army. Maybe I should just stick with company sized formations. . .
As a side question, are units researched? Or do you just build what ever units you have designed and they get the latest tech levels automatically?
Also, I vaguely remember there was going to be an improved personal weapon for infantry. Did you remove that and I didn't see it or was that just an idea?
You can't assign a commander to a formation without an HQ and you can't pass on higher-formation bonuses to formations without an HQ.
If you gain higher tech, you will need to design and research new units. For example, House Reichmann has a Panzer III, which is a Medium Vehicle with MAV and CAP using base tech 6 armour and 6 weapon. If armour and weapon tech increases to 8, they could create a Panzer III Ausf B with the same components but higher overall capability and update the formation template for the Panzer Kompanie with the new design (so newer formations will incorporate the update design). Existing formations (as in the real world) will retain the older vehicle.
If a unit must have its own HQ to receive parent bonuses, then in that example losing a 12500 HQ would mean that the bottom unit gets no bonuses from anywhere. Similarly, it sounds like losing an HQ in the middle of the chain might separate all its subordinates from the top-level bonuses.
Unit must have its own HQ to receive parent bonuses. OK that means having nested formations results in stacking bonuses. Good to know.
Losing the 12,500 would result in unit getting no bonuses from anywhere. Hmm, so this is very WWII based, and in that context it makes sense. So in WWII the smallest unit to have radio assigned was the company. They got one per company. So if the company radio went out, they could not coordinate with the battalion.
Losing HQ in the middle separates subs from top. Once again very WWII era centric. It was normal then for Battalion comms to be on one frequency, and then have another for brigade. Artillery support would be called in at the battalion level from the Brigade artillery. Company commanders had to relay fire missions through battalion unless they had one of the battalion FO's with them.
Modernized units have each combat soldier on a squad net, squad leaders on a battalion net with company, platoon, and FO/JTAC subnets. But I can live with the WWII model. Reall means we need to have multiple levels of units in each Field Order section though.
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Except testing -- of the one or two bonues we can actually see -- showed no displayed effect from upper-level HQs.
And removing the HQ from say, a Company while leaving the formation under a Battalion (with intact HQ) should logically simply make the Battalion HQ the unit HQ, and apply the Battalion commanders bonuses at full (and the Regimant commander's at one less step remove, etc.)
Finally, HQ units are pretty cheap so there's not a lot of cost and/or mineral savings in having a 'flat' division, while (once stacking HQ bonuses are working correctly) there's no replacement for the lost bonuses. So you can have +20% combat power and a handful of resources, or +26.25% combat power. I sincerely doubt anything you can do with the aforementioned 'handful of resources' is going to make up for the extra 6.25%.
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No where in the changes does it say commanders pass on their bonuses to lower formations in their chain.
So its WAI and you can't stack bonuses.
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No where in the changes does it say commanders pass on their bonuses to lower formations in their chain.
So its WAI and you can't stack bonuses.
You can't assign a commander to a formation without an HQ and you can't pass on higher-formation bonuses to formations without an HQ
Your statement and Steve's statement contradict...
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In Admin Commands higher level officers pass on bonuses at a reduced rate.
In Naval Commands higher level officers pass on bonuses at a reduced rate.
In VB Aurora Ground Force Commands, higher level officers pass on bonuses at a reduced rate.
In Steve's fiction higher level ground commanders pass on bonuses at a reduced rate.
In Steve's comments higher level ground commanders are implied to pass on bonuses at a reduced rate.
I think it's a safe assumption that commanders are supposed to pass their bonuses down the chain.
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Great demonstration. Simple and to the point. Thanks.