Ground Unit Size

[Adseria (OP)]

This is a question specifically for Steve: when you play, what sort of size do you imagine your ground units to represent? For instance, is one "infantry unit" a single man? A fireteam? A squad? A platoon? How about vehicles? I always assumed that one "Light vehicle" unit represented a single vehicle, but is that correct?

And now, some more generic questions, for everyone: How big an army should I aim to have? How do you arrange your ORBAT? Do you lump all of your units into a single massive formation, or do you split everything down to the point where every unit is in it's own formation, or somewhere in between? Why do you arrange things the way you do? How large an army do you have on any given planet?

[Barkhorn]

It's basically impossible to have every unit be its own formation, because each ground forces training center can only train one formation at a time.  If you want say, 2000 man infantry divisions, you'd need 2000 ground force training centers to make ONE, not to mention the micromanagement hell involved in moving them all into the order of battle one at a time.

As for how big your whole army is, it depends what you're doing.  Defensive forces can be significantly smaller than offensive forces if you bring construction equipment.  For example, I invaded an alien homeworld that had 240,000 tons of ground troops with 350,000 tons of my own.  I also had a 1 level tech advantage in both weapons and armor.  I won, with 128,000 tons remaining.  And it wasn't horrible terrain.  They would've beaten me if it was mountains or jungle.

[Froggiest1982]

It's basically impossible to have every unit be its own formation, because each ground forces training center can only train one formation at a time.  If you want say, 2000 man infantry divisions, you'd need 2000 ground force training centers to make ONE, not to mention the micromanagement hell involved in moving them all into the order of battle one at a time.

As for how big your whole army is, it depends what you're doing.  Defensive forces can be significantly smaller than offensive forces if you bring construction equipment.  For example, I invaded an alien homeworld that had 240,000 tons of ground troops with 350,000 tons of my own.  I also had a 1 level tech advantage in both weapons and armor.  I won, with 128,000 tons remaining.  And it wasn't horrible terrain.  They would've beaten me if it was mountains or jungle.

Honestly for me also depends on my commanders. No point to have large HQs if nobody can lead them.

[Zhatelier]

While I'm not Steve, my personal approach is that a single infantry unit is a squad of infantry (and the transport tonnage or rather, transport volume, includes things like ammunition, weapons, personnel, supplies, tent accommodation etc.) and a vehicle is a singular vehicle including the crew required to operate it as well as fuel, some rudimentary spare parts as well as the stuff for the crew.

As for the formation sizes, I tend to keep individual formations at most at 5kt (or sometimes much smaller) in size to allow flexibility in transporting them and then use them as building blocks to form a proper unit hierarchy. For example in my Red Galaxy playthrough, I'm currently going to have companies of 100 tons (for infantry) or 250 tons (motorized/mechanized), formed into 750 ton battalions (250t HQ), Regiments (2kt HQ + 4 battalions), Brigades (5kt HQ + 4 Regiments) and later into bigger formations as well, in which case I'm consolidating the companies and battalions into single battalion formation layer to lower the micro a tiny bit.

[Llamageddon]

The bottom of the first post here has a useful reference for unit sizes. Going by that and the tonnage of a single infantry unit in the game, I consider them to be about squad or platoon size.

In my game I've gone with:

• Small infantry company - 100t
• Infantry company - 250t
• Infantry batallion -1000t
• Infantry brigade 2500t

I've done similar with vehicle formation sizes. Then I've designed my transports with multiples of those numbers in mind. To keep small colonies happy I've been shipping out two 1000t garrison Batalions with two garisson companies of 250t to fill a small transport with 2500t. Otherwise my main infantry forces are just being shipped out in 2500t brigades. Largest army I have on a colony right now is 10000t I've only just made my first 2500t tank destroyer brigade to deal with what I think are some spoiler race forces on a planet. I'll need at least 4 of those to secure the planet

With these numbers in mind my tansports are currently designed at 2500t, 5000t and 10000t capacities. I imagine, for a large invasion force a 25000-50000 ton transport would be very useful, but is overkill for me right now. If that scenario happens I might be tempted to make regiment/divison size units at up to 25000t, but I suspect mixing my batallions together in my OOB would be more effective and easier to manage in the short term.

I am very new to this though, but I thought I'd let you know what I am doing as you asked. 

[Andrew]

My current minimum ground force is a Cohort of 10,000 tons, grouped into Legions of 6 cohorts and a 10,000 ton command cohort for nearly 70,000tons.
3 Legions and 4 cohorts of supply units form an Army of 260000 tons including HQ.
I would never bother dropping less than a full army on a spoiler force and a planatery invasion would be multiple armies. If the terrain and environment are sufficiently different with any 2 of temperature, gravity or terrain giving me issues I'll seriously consider glassing the planet with nukes rather than waste ground troops on it unless it is just a small spoiler force with valuable ruins or planatery environment.

In my experience a planatary invasion against real defenders is quite likely to wreck the planet anyway, if the environment is hostile it will wreck the planet and my troops so I'll skip losing the troops and just wreck the planet.

Invasion forces are all Medium or better vehicles, defensive forces are largely infantry and static weapons, although there may well be mobile field forces present as well.

Any Invasion force will probably have besides the 4 10000 ton supply units in the army at least another 4 probably 12 in reserve onboard transports for when the deployed supply units run out. I often underestimate the needed number of supply units

STO, Construction and Survey units are also 10,000 ton Auxillia but they don't get grouped into larger formations.

[Ektor]

I tend to make my battalions 5 ktons because it's the size of a large troop transport module on a ship. So if I have a troop transport with say, five of them, I'll build four battalions of 5 kton plus a brigade formation which has 5 ktons of supply trucks. It's usually the configuration I run with.

[Bremen]

I tend to plan based on mechanics instead of roleplay, so when I decided how big to make ground units I looked at two things: How much transport bays hold (5k/25k) and the command capability of ground combat officers. The latter is skill based and somewhat random, but I surveyed what I got in a single game:

Majors: 1k-50k command rating, with 70% >5k
Lieutenant Colonels: 10k-450k, with 60% >30k
Colonels: 36k-2.25m, with 70% >80k
Brigadier Generals: 75k-425k, with 66% >300k (small sample size)

Note that (IIRC) officers can command units larger than their rating, but the bonus gets proportionately reduced.

So I decided to make my base unit regiments, at 5,000 tons. Brigades are 25k tons with four regiments and a 5k HQ, and Divisions 80k with three brigades and a 5k HQ. That lets me make effective use of three ranks of officers. I never got to the point of needing something bigger, but three divisions and an HQ would make a good 245k corps. Brigadier Generals also do well overseeing academies, if you don't use corps.

[Steve Walmsley]

This is a question specifically for Steve: when you play, what sort of size do you imagine your ground units to represent? For instance, is one "infantry unit" a single man? A fireteam? A squad? A platoon? How about vehicles? I always assumed that one "Light vehicle" unit represented a single vehicle, but is that correct?

And now, some more generic questions, for everyone: How big an army should I aim to have? How do you arrange your ORBAT? Do you lump all of your units into a single massive formation, or do you split everything down to the point where every unit is in it's own formation, or somewhere in between? Why do you arrange things the way you do? How large an army do you have on any given planet?

It is deliberately vague, so you can make you own decision about what something represents. That ambiguity allows a lot more freedom in creating ground forces.

Personally I use one infantry = one person because the tonnage is transport requirement, not actual size, but that is personal preference, not a rule.

[YABG]

I like one unit = one man with the exception of CAP/AT/Bombardment ect (they're weapons teams and 2-3 men) and styling my units after IRL organizations.

Interestingly, the future US Marine squad organization fits very nicely into shippable chunks.

1 Squad leader (HQ 100 or PW if in a bigger organization)
1 Grenadier (PWI)
1 Rifleman/Systems operator (PW)

3x fireteams of:
1 Grenadier (PWI)
1 Autorifleman and assistant gunner (CAP)
1 Rifleman (PW)

This gives a total of 80 tons (HQ, 4 PWI, 4 PW, 3 CAP) so can make a nice little boarding squad with the potential of adding extra Riflemen or an attached weapons team for more firepower.

Practically, I stick to 1-2000 ton companies as the smallest unit and build my way up to 25-75000 ton brigade combat teams/marine expeditionary units (NATO style combined arms formations that are becoming the common method of organizing military formations).

I've started a multi-empire game recently so I'm hoping to see how well RL inspired match up to each other. Looks like the USSR will be the first to deploy a TN ground unit (a 1000ton infantry company) for off-world defense although China will be getting powered armoured dudes out sooner rather than later. I'm thinking of building some smaller platoon/squad sized special forces units and RP'ing some covert skirmishing over mining locations out in space where the DSTS's can't see.