Quick demonstration on making ground units

[Garfunkel (OP)]

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.

[Droll]

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.

[Black]

Does your Division HQ need extra HQ capacity forlogistics battalion or do they not take any HQ capacity when you attach them to division?

[Father Tim]

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.

[Fray]

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).

[Pedroig]

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.

[Fray]

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.

[Pedroig]

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.

[Father Tim]

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%.

[DFNewb]

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.

[Pedroig]

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...

[Father Tim]

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.

[Zed 6]

Great demonstration.  Simple and to the point.  Thanks.