Ground Combat Observations and 'Rough Spots'

[davidb86]

If I understand correctly the formula, that was quoted above - the most effective police strength force will be not one big formation, but on the contrary a stack of small formations:

4t = 2*2t
SQRT(4) = 2 < ~2.8 = 2*SQRT(2)

Close, the size refers to the total size in terms of tonnage. So if all ground forces have 100000 tons of weight that is the value that is used for size.
Most effective policing formation is going to be one that can fit the most number of units inside any given size. Unit quantity is a bigger factor than that of size which is why further up this thread people suggest using the 3t infantryman, the smollest unit you can get.

To that effect, you can have formations be as big as you need. Just use the optimal type of unit in them for maximum policing power.

Occupation value is based on the square root of the size in tons of the designed elements regardless of how they are placed in formations.

For example:

• infantry element with light armor and light personal weapons weighs 3 tons and has an occupation value of sqrt(3)=1.732 * the number of elements*morale/10000
• infantry HQ (10,000) has a weight of 100 tons so an occupation value of 10 the number of elements*morale/10000

A formation of 100 morale Military Police with 3200 MP's and 2-HQ would have a police value of 55.624  not sqrt(9800)*100/10000= 0.99. 

Having two 100 morale MP formations of 1600 MP's and 1 HQ each would have a police value of 55.624  not 2*sqrt(4900)*100/1000= 2*70*100/10000=1.40.

[Malorn (OP)]

I think the amount of discussion on the topic makes it obvious that an in-game UI display would be quite helpful. 

[liveware]

Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.

Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.

My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.

I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.

For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.

[Droll]

Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.

Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.

My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.

I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.

For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.

I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.

Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.

[Ulzgoroth]

Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.

Not so. Or rather, half true, but the other half makes it completely misleading.

Yes, units generate 100 times as much police strength as they should. But populations usually generate more than 100 times as much unrest as they should. So on balance fixing both bugs will normally make military suppression of unrest moderately stronger.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11593.msg136342#msg136342

[liveware]

Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.

Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.

My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.

I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.

For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.

I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.

Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.

Oh I completely agree with you, Mars should have left the empire long ago. I was surprised that it didn't. In fact I at one point had built almost 100 colonial guard battalions (basically 5k ton police formations) to try and control the unrest there. But eventually I gave up since it was getting resource constraining to field that many garrison troops.

Mars is slooooowly being terraformed into a less watery world, but it seems it is much slower a process to dehydrate a planet than to hydrate it.

[Droll]

Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.

Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.

My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.

I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.

For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.

I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.

Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.

Oh I completely agree with you, Mars should have left the empire long ago. I was surprised that it didn't. In fact I at one point had built almost 100 colonial guard battalions (basically 5k ton police formations) to try and control the unrest there. But eventually I gave up since it was getting resource constraining to field that many garrison troops.

Mars is slooooowly being terraformed into a less watery world, but it seems it is much slower a process to dehydrate a planet than to hydrate it.

The problem with dehydration is that at fast terraforming rates if you do 30 day increments you end up completely removing water vapour - ofc a trace amount returns as there is still water but what this does is that the game sets your terraforming state to "none". So either you do 5 day increments or like me you get mad and SM mode the hydrosphere down after waiting an arbitrary amount of time.

[liveware]

I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).

[Droll]

I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).

Are we still talking about terraforming? That terraforming happens every production cycle.

I don't know if theres anything special that happens during combat terraforming but either way you'd have to be passing 5 days through 5 second increments which I find hard to believe.

[serger]

I'm setting  production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.

[liveware]

I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).

Are we still talking about terraforming? That terraforming happens every production cycle.

I don't know if theres anything special that happens during combat terraforming but either way you'd have to be passing 5 days through 5 second increments which I find hard to believe.

I was talking in general terms. I usually run the game at 1-5 day increments, other considerations notwithstanding.

[liveware]

I'm setting  production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.

6 hour cycles are not standard? I assume you have access to source code and are able to recompile with non-standard options?

[Droll]

I'm setting  production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.

6 hour cycles are not standard? I assume you have access to source code and are able to recompile with non-standard options?

In the game settings you can change the value for production cycles - by default its 430000 or something which corresponds to 5 days in seconds. Idk why he did 6 specifically but it is almost certainly possible to reduce it to that.

If you really hate yourself you could make the production cycle 5 sec increments.

So no there is no need for decompiling the code for this - I think you misunderstood him as having 6 hour increments available as explicit increments like 3 and 8 hours.

[serger]

Idk why he did 6 specifically

Have tried 8 hours to match standart 8h inc, but it appeared there is ~1/2 chance that exactly matched cycle will not be done (some rounding issue?), so now it's 6 hours as it's plausibe production shift too.

[Droll]

Idk why he did 6 specifically

Have tried 8 hours to match standart 8h inc, but it appeared there is ~1/2 chance that exactly matched cycle will not be done (some rounding issue?), so now it's 6 hours as it's plausibe production shift too.

Change it to 5 secs or no balls