Ground Formations

[Alsadius (OP)]

A quick request. For unit types where the game-mechanical structure of the underlying elements isn't clear, could people perhaps add some notes about what's what? It doesn't need to be right next to the unit like i did it, but some kind of legend would be nice. I can't really understand a force structure that just says "Tank", unfortunately.

(I'll throw a note over in Suggestions for some ideas to help make this easier for us)

[thashepherd]

I went through a few iterations and ended up with the following force structure:

Battalion HQ - 4000 cap
Regimental HQ - 20k cap
Division HQ - 100k cap
Army HQ - 400k cap

My 'actual' combat units are battalions that come with their own HQ. The divisions are triangular and each regiment contains 3 infantry battalions, 3 artillery battalions, and a support company (the battalions are usually a little under the 4k HQ cap). Construction battalions are provided at division level.

I started out building battalions out of individual companies, and had brigades in between my regiments and divisions, but things evolved quickly. 1k does make a reasonable company size if you want to go that far, and 50k isn't too bad for brigades.

[Froggiest1982]

It really depends on what do you have in mind. I generally would recommend starting from the grounds up.

Generally speaking though:

Army - size depending on how many corps you need

Corps - different corps form the army. Each Corp usually has a purpose and the size depends on the below:
Division - Made up of more than 10,000 troops (including support personnel)
Brigade - Made up of about 3,000 troops, each brigade will serve a specific purpose and will be completely autonomous, containing all the support and command personnel needed.

Within each brigade, troops are further broken down into smaller groups:
Battalion - up to 1,000 soldiers
Company - approximately 100 soldiers
Platoon - up to 50 soldiers (this is the smallest unit lead by a commissioned officer)

Furthermore, if you really want to go deeper you could break down the platoon as per following:
Section or squad - Approximately eight soldiers
Fire Team - four soldiers

Please note you don't individually design the Section and the Fire Teams, but you just draw them so that they reflect your Platoon whatever level you want to start from.

For instance, as said at the beginning you scale up. So in my above comments, you start from the Platoons: meaning you draft your teams to make your Platoons and then you only add commands for the upper levels.

To be honest I think the best is to start with Battalions but I have seen many people here starting from the brigade up.

The reason why I start with the Battalions is that it's avoiding me to have lots of small groups for Xeno archaeology, geology teams, boarding parties etc. I design them within the Army already and when it's needed I just detach them.

[smoelf]

As an experiment, I fired up a new game and looked at the ground command stat for my commanders. It seems that even among the lowest ranking commanders it is not unusual to see ground command potential of 3.000 or 4.000. I have a few as low as 1.250, but most are a good deal beyond that. I think at the start that I am going to use that as a guideline for designing my formations. The lowest ranking commanders could easily command formations of 3.000 and more, so I think that will be the most basic units with higher organizational elements being in the range of 20.000 to 40.000 (or thereabouts).

[Froggiest1982]

As an experiment, I fired up a new game and looked at the ground command stat for my commanders. It seems that even among the lowest ranking commanders it is not unusual to see ground command potential of 3.000 or 4.000. I have a few as low as 1.250, but most are a good deal beyond that. I think at the start that I am going to use that as a guideline for designing my formations. The lowest ranking commanders could easily command formations of 3.000 and more, so I think that will be the most basic units with higher organizational elements being in the range of 20.000 to 40.000 (or thereabouts).

That is good, just remember as I highlighted that you will require ground units for more than war. We talking Police, Outpost sweeps, geosurvey, etc

[Rye123]

As an experiment, I fired up a new game and looked at the ground command stat for my commanders. It seems that even among the lowest ranking commanders it is not unusual to see ground command potential of 3.000 or 4.000. I have a few as low as 1.250, but most are a good deal beyond that. I think at the start that I am going to use that as a guideline for designing my formations. The lowest ranking commanders could easily command formations of 3.000 and more, so I think that will be the most basic units with higher organizational elements being in the range of 20.000 to 40.000 (or thereabouts).

That is good, just remember as I highlighted that you will require ground units for more than war. We talking Police, Outpost sweeps, geosurvey, etc

Wait, you're saying I can't use brigades of heavy tanks to police my people?

[MarcAFK]

As an experiment, I fired up a new game and looked at the ground command stat for my commanders. It seems that even among the lowest ranking commanders it is not unusual to see ground command potential of 3.000 or 4.000. I have a few as low as 1.250, but most are a good deal beyond that. I think at the start that I am going to use that as a guideline for designing my formations. The lowest ranking commanders could easily command formations of 3.000 and more, so I think that will be the most basic units with higher organizational elements being in the range of 20.000 to 40.000 (or thereabouts).

That is good, just remember as I highlighted that you will require ground units for more than war. We talking Police, Outpost sweeps, geosurvey, etc

Wait, you're saying I can't use brigades of heavy tanks to police my people?

Just make sure you include a single Small Laser for uh. "less lethal policing" .

[Pedroig]

It really depends on what do you have in mind.  I generally would recommend starting from the grounds up. 

Generally speaking though:

Army - size depending on how many corps you need

Corps - different corps form the army.  Each Corp usually has a purpose and the size depends on the below:
Division - Made up of more than 10,000 troops (including support personnel)
Brigade - Made up of about 3,000 troops, each brigade will serve a specific purpose and will be completely autonomous, containing all the support and command personnel needed.

Within each brigade, troops are further broken down into smaller groups:
Battalion - up to 1,000 soldiers
Company - approximately 100 soldiers
Platoon - up to 50 soldiers (this is the smallest unit lead by a commissioned officer)

Furthermore, if you really want to go deeper you could break down the platoon as per following:
Section or squad - Approximately eight soldiers
Fire Team - four soldiers

Please note you don't individually design the Section and the Fire Teams, but you just draw them so that they reflect your Platoon whatever level you want to start from.

For instance, as said at the beginning you scale up.  So in my above comments, you start from the Platoons: meaning you draft your teams to make your Platoons and then you only add commands for the upper levels.

To be honest I think the best is to start with Battalions but I have seen many people here starting from the brigade up.

The reason why I start with the Battalions is that it's avoiding me to have lots of small groups for Xeno archaeology, geology teams, boarding parties etc.  I design them within the Army already and when it's needed I just detach them.

Just remember the HQ, supply, and transport is by weight, not soldiers. . .   

[DFNewb]

So currently this is what I have:

Code: [Select]

Total Formations: 47
Total Transport Size: 299 234 tons
Total Cost: 8 721 BP

13 658x Infantry
1 308x Light Static AP
1 140x Light Static M-BOMB
504x Light Static L-BOMB
492x Light Static L-AA
492x Light Static L-AT
312x Light Static M-AT
300x Light Static M-AA
197x Logistics Vehicle 500
132x Anti Air Team
110x Anti Tank Team
89x MedVeh Light Construction
52x Resupply Infantry
26x Light Static HQ 10000
26x Infantry HQ
6x Med Static HQ 50000
1x MedVeh MedHQ 1000000

L and M are for light and medium, the Construction vehicles are double construction. The things like Infantry and Anti air team are the ones generated when a civ colony is made, I added some of those Civilian garrison units into my army.

To get my 1 million HQ I kinda cheated by using my last 134 instant research points into researching the whole 80k cost (which was my entire pool of free research hehehe).



That's just earth I have about 50k ton worth of units on two other planets.



These construction brigades are supposed to be my real ones and not ones with 1mil HQ's in them, that's a special one just for Earth.

What do you guys think? Is this organized properly / decent number of GU's for roughly 700million pop on earth with 50million on the other two planets?


Hmmmm

The way the formations are actually set up I feel is wrong. Looking over the commander stats it looks like I should be separating my bombs and AA and logistics from the rest. Maybe also split up larger formations of formations by Front line attacks and defenders afterwards.

Anyone have any idea of how GU's affect policing and what stats are important for that? How many tons of GU's do you like to have?

[Father Tim]

Anyone have any idea of how GU's affect policing and what stats are important for that? How many tons of GU's do you like to have?

In VB Aurora it was defense strength, but in C# Aurora changing the armour rating does not seem to have any effect.

The important stat (for the commander) is Occupation.  So far a decent amount of ground troops has been quite successful at supressing unrest, such that I've never built troops strictly for reducing unrest -- my normal army does it automatically as a bonus effect.

[Froggiest1982]

So currently this is what I have:

Code: [Select]

Total Formations: 47
Total Transport Size: 299 234 tons
Total Cost: 8 721 BP

13 658x Infantry
1 308x Light Static AP
1 140x Light Static M-BOMB
504x Light Static L-BOMB
492x Light Static L-AA
492x Light Static L-AT
312x Light Static M-AT
300x Light Static M-AA
197x Logistics Vehicle 500
132x Anti Air Team
110x Anti Tank Team
89x MedVeh Light Construction
52x Resupply Infantry
26x Light Static HQ 10000
26x Infantry HQ
6x Med Static HQ 50000
1x MedVeh MedHQ 1000000

L and M are for light and medium, the Construction vehicles are double construction. The things like Infantry and Anti air team are the ones generated when a civ colony is made, I added some of those Civilian garrison units into my army.

To get my 1 million HQ I kinda cheated by using my last 134 instant research points into researching the whole 80k cost (which was my entire pool of free research hehehe).



That's just earth I have about 50k ton worth of units on two other planets.



These construction brigades are supposed to be my real ones and not ones with 1mil HQ's in them, that's a special one just for Earth.

What do you guys think? Is this organized properly / decent number of GU's for roughly 700million pop on earth with 50million on the other two planets?


Hmmmm

The way the formations are actually set up I feel is wrong. Looking over the commander stats it looks like I should be separating my bombs and AA and logistics from the rest. Maybe also split up larger formations of formations by Front line attacks and defenders afterwards.

Anyone have any idea of how GU's affect policing and what stats are important for that? How many tons of GU's do you like to have?

Of course, that is why I specifically told you chose the UOM and then you add just Admin Commands.

[thashepherd]

The way the formations are actually set up I feel is wrong. Looking over the commander stats it looks like I should be separating my bombs and AA and logistics from the rest. Maybe also split up larger formations of formations by Front line attacks and defenders afterwards.

Yes, right now your bombardment units are dead weight. They need to be explicitly moved to the 'support' (or 'rear echelon', in some cases) position and explicitly assigned to support a unit in the front-line position. See http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10849.msg124794#msg124794 for some research I did into how they work, it's not necessarily intuitive.

No clue how position impacts your AA units, FWIW.

[Alsadius (OP)]

No clue how position impacts your AA units, FWIW.

Per the dev diaries:

- LAA shoots fighters that are attacking their own formation.
- MAA shoots fighters that are attacking their own formation, or a formation directly subordinate to their own formation.
- HAA shoots fighters that are attacking any allied formation.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109914#msg109914

Let's look at a simple force structure, with multiple brigades(front-line) per division(support), and multiple divisions per corps (rear echelon).
- LAA in a brigade will attack fighters that are attacking that brigade. Ditto division or corps. They will not attack anywhere else.
- MAA in a brigade will attack fighters that are attacking that brigade. MAA in a division will attack fighters that are attacking the division itself, or any brigade subordinate to that division. MAA in a corps will attack fighters that are attacking the corps itself, or any division subordinate to that corps, but not brigades that are indirectly subordinate to the corps.
- HAA will attack any fighters that attack any unit anywhere in the force structure. They will prioritize their own unit and subordinates, but are not limited to them.

So basically, use LAA in units that expect air attack(generally brigades), MAA in the parents of units expecting air attack (generally divisions), and HAA anywhere you like. HAA at the corps level is good if you want to keep it safe. However, HAA at the brigade/division level is quite practical too, since every unit can cover every other unit. Because of the large size and cost of HAA, I probably wouldn't put them on the front lines until you're up to SHV/UHV sized units, because otherwise you're just building glass cannons, but you can if you like.

[DFNewb]

No clue how position impacts your AA units, FWIW.

Per the dev diaries:

- LAA shoots fighters that are attacking their own formation.
- MAA shoots fighters that are attacking their own formation, or a formation directly subordinate to their own formation.
- HAA shoots fighters that are attacking any allied formation.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109914#msg109914

Let's look at a simple force structure, with multiple brigades(front-line) per division(support), and multiple divisions per corps (rear echelon).
- LAA in a brigade will attack fighters that are attacking that brigade. Ditto division or corps. They will not attack anywhere else.
- MAA in a brigade will attack fighters that are attacking that brigade. MAA in a division will attack fighters that are attacking the division itself, or any brigade subordinate to that division. MAA in a corps will attack fighters that are attacking the corps itself, or any division subordinate to that corps, but not brigades that are indirectly subordinate to the corps.
- HAA will attack any fighters that attack any unit anywhere in the force structure. They will prioritize their own unit and subordinates, but are not limited to them.

So basically, use LAA in units that expect air attack(generally brigades), MAA in the parents of units expecting air attack (generally divisions), and HAA anywhere you like. HAA at the corps level is good if you want to keep it safe. However, HAA at the brigade/division level is quite practical too, since every unit can cover every other unit. Because of the large size and cost of HAA, I probably wouldn't put them on the front lines until you're up to SHV/UHV sized units, because otherwise you're just building glass cannons, but you can if you like.

I just want to say I think what you said for AA applies to bombardment aswell. So generally you want light stuff on the front line and medium in support with heavy at the very back. Only AA and bombardment have these special rules.

[Alsadius (OP)]

I just want to say I think what you said for AA applies to bombardment aswell. So generally you want light stuff on the front line and medium in support with heavy at the very back. Only AA and bombardment have these special rules.

I think it's a bit different for bombardment. My understanding is:
- LB in support can hit enemy front-lines. LB in rear-echelon is useless.
- MB in support can hit enemy front-line or support. MB in rear echelon can hit enemy front lines.
- MBL and HB in support can hit any enemy formation. MBL and HB in rear echelon can hit enemy front lines or support.

However, I am much less confident of my understanding there. Here's the original post: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109786#msg109786