Light Vehicles - When and why?

[liveware (OP)]

Simple question:

When (and why) do you use light vehicles? I find myself always using infantry, static units, and the heaviest armored vehicles available. As one starts with medium vehicles even with a conventional start, I struggle to find the niche for light vehicles. What are other peoples perspectives?

[Droll]

Light vehicles have a 0.4 to hit chance making them the unit type that has the largest evasion on the attack - even more than that of infantry. As such, if the enemy can reliably penetrate your heavy armor (especially if its happening because of their tech advantage), you might actually find that light vehicles are outright more survivable then the heavies.

[Kristover]

I just fought a long extended war where my main ground force was two armor divisions (heavy tanks with lots of artillery), a power-armored infantry division, a light infantry division, and a Cavalry regiment (light vehicles with autocannons and crew served weapons).  My best killers in that force were the light Cavalry regiment and the artillery.

[the obelisk]

I'm pretty sure that in a matchup of light vehicles armed with medium AV weapons and medium vehicles with medium AV and CAP weapons (which seems like the standard way to set up a tank on a medium vehicle until you have access to heavier weaponry) the light vehicles have an edge from weapon efficiency.

I'm also pretty sure there's some validity to using light vehicles as HQ units, since it'll be smaller and cheaper than a larger vehicle and doesn't waste space with a mostly useless secondary weapon while still having the vehicle bonus for breakthrough calculation.

[shock]

Seems like the unit roles go as following
Light Veh: Main invasion units
Med though Ultra Veh: Heavy anti-veh weapons and break though force
Static Defense: Main defensive units
Armored Inf: Boarding troops (seems not cost effective compared to light veh and static defenses for ground combat)
Non-armroed Inf with a cheap/useless weapons: Cannon fonder (not convinced if they are useful for anything.   But being cheap and hard to hit could be useful for buying time until you can bring reinforcements and/or wasting the enemy supplies)

[StarshipCactus]

The non armoured cheap infantry are good for garrisons when you don't expect to ever get into a fight.

[Borealis4x]

I'm pretty sure light vehicles are for taking the place of weapon teams in your offensive infantry formations. They weigh the same thing as weapon teams but have a bonus to maneuver at the cost of having the lowest entrenchment ability.

It is kinda weird that a weapons team + dune buggy weigh the same as just a weapons team, but I get the logic.

[Droll]

I'm pretty sure light vehicles are for taking the place of weapon teams in your offensive infantry formations. They weigh the same thing as weapon teams but have a bonus to maneuver at the cost of having the lowest entrenchment ability.

Light vehicles are also for when your armor technology cant keep up with enemy weapons - making them more survivable than the heavy tanks. You can't tech against speed for ground combat.

[Borealis4x]

Can Light Vehicles replace infantry completely? I forgot if they can 'mount' Personal Weapons which iirc would make them just as heavy as a regular infantryman tho more expensive.

P.S. I'm honestly digging how light vehicles are the meta ATM. In the far future when weapons get even more deadly I'd bet anything that maneuvering out of the way of said guns is always better than trying to tank it.

[Droll]

Can Light Vehicles replace infantry completely? I forgot if they can 'mount' Personal Weapons which iirc would make them just as heavy as a regular infantryman tho more expensive.

P.S. I'm honestly digging how light vehicles are the meta ATM. In the far future when weapons get even more deadly I'd bet anything that maneuvering out of the way of said guns is always better than trying to tank it.

PW and PWI are infantry only unfortunately. Also your "far future" can even be seen today - especially in naval settings where most defenses on ships focus on actively avoiding damage as opposed to taking it.

[nuclearslurpee]

Can Light Vehicles replace infantry completely? I forgot if they can 'mount' Personal Weapons which iirc would make them just as heavy as a regular infantryman tho more expensive.

P.S. I'm honestly digging how light vehicles are the meta ATM. In the far future when weapons get even more deadly I'd bet anything that maneuvering out of the way of said guns is always better than trying to tank it.

The major reason that light vehicles (or Statics on the defensive) do not replace infantry is that the latter give you a meatshield effect. The same tonnage as a LVH+CAP, which is the smallest combat light vehicle you can build, will give you five INF+PW, four INF+PWI, or a Zerg-like eight INF+PWL. Each of those infantry units is capable of absorbing a shot from an enemy weapon that would otherwise have taken out your LVH, which is particularly a daunting capability against MAV/HAV weapons which only get one shot per round, thus reducing the overall rate at which your force is attrited.

Additionally, it is possible on the offensive to give infantry as much armor (but not quite as much HP) as a light vehicle, which admittedly does give them costs comparable to a light vehicle but lets you get very tonnage-efficient with your light weapons, notably 2x INF+CAP has the same size as a single LVH+CAP. This is usually excessive on the defensive but very powerful on the offensive where power-to-tonnage ratio reigns supreme.

The current ground forces system for all its work-in-progress issues really is great at giving almost every unit type and component a viable use at least in the world of theorycrafting.

[Polestar]

Light vehicles are definitely getting some love on this thread - and they deserve it. Another of their uses is bombardment elements within expeditionary forces, especially for those not in rear echelon formations. While light vehicle bombardment loses some firepower-per size compared to infantry, their combination of good dodging and decent HPs makes them vastly more survivable than even armoured infantry.

Infantry, IMHO, are not getting enough love here. On the offense, infantry (especially when armoured) are my go-to elements on jungle, desert, mountain, and rift valley worlds, because they can be trained for these conditions, effectively giving them both superior firepower and supply efficiency, which in turn means transport space efficiency. On the defense, high entrenchment bonuses - especially if you've included construction elements - make foot truly difficult to dislodge.

[Droll]

Light vehicles are definitely getting some love on this thread - and they deserve it. Another of their uses is bombardment elements within expeditionary forces, especially for those not in rear echelon formations. While light vehicle bombardment loses some firepower-per size compared to infantry, their combination of good dodging and decent HPs makes them vastly more survivable than even armoured infantry.

Infantry, IMHO, are not getting enough love here. On the offense, infantry (especially when armoured) are my go-to elements on jungle, desert, mountain, and rift valley worlds, because they can be trained for these conditions, effectively giving them both superior firepower and supply efficiency, which in turn means transport space efficiency. On the defense, high entrenchment bonuses - especially if you've included construction elements - make foot truly difficult to dislodge.

It should be noted that infantry are as not well suited for defending on desert worlds. Desert is the only terrain that vehicles can be trained for and is also the only terrain that reduces fortification for defending units. Since infantry/statics have the most fortification they are affected the most by this.

[nuclearslurpee]

Light vehicles are definitely getting some love on this thread - and they deserve it. Another of their uses is bombardment elements within expeditionary forces, especially for those not in rear echelon formations. While light vehicle bombardment loses some firepower-per size compared to infantry, their combination of good dodging and decent HPs makes them vastly more survivable than even armoured infantry.

Light vehicles are actually not ideal for bombardment units, unless you for some reason (why?!) keep your bombardment units in the front line. While light vehicles have high evasion, this stat only matters when a unit is in front line attack position - for all other positions including front line defense the evasion stat is a nonfactor. Since bombardment in a front-line unit is basically useless (even LB is basically a worse CAP by tonnage though it does have a few specific use cases), you're better off putting your bombardment weapons in the support echelon (or rear for HB/MBL) in which case using medium vehicles or heavier will give you the best protection for offensive forces. For defensive forces of course you almost always want to use statics.

The light vehicle vs power armor infantry comparison is rather nuanced. It is true that LVH are more survivable on the offensive due to higher HP and evasion (this works out even on a per-ton basis for non-PW weapon types). However, armored infantry are more tonnage-efficient in terms of offensive firepower, most extremely you can transport 2x INF+CAP for every LVH+CAP doubling your CAP firepower. Thus the infantry will die somewhat quicker than the vehicles but they will also deal more damage per combat round. Also notably against MAV and heavier with 100% kill rate against light vehicles, the greater numbers of infantry offer more survivability. The point being, neither option is a clear-cut winner and it depends on the specifics of the ground situation. Light vehicles or course are great for their capability to mount medium weapons and thus always have at least some role in a mechanized (as opposed to armored) offensive formation.

[chrislocke2000]

Desert is the only terrain that vehicles can be trained for.
[/quote]

This just perked my interest a lot - are you saying terrain and other environment training has no impact on vehicles and only troops even though you can select these options for vehicles when you design them?