Some suggestions for the Ground Units tab. These are just ideas - I don't feel strongly about them....
1) My understanding is that, at present, ground units must be in a PDC to take advantage of their parent formation's training bonus.
1A) Change this so that only ground units outside a PDC will get increases from training. This will introduce a strategic trade-off between leaving your troops out in the open where they can be killed from space, but will be training up, v.s. having them safe inside their PDCs....
1B) Introduce a time lag similar to that involving in boarding actions for troops to transfer in/out of a PDC. That way, if an enemy suddenly appears in the sky 3 hours out from the home planet, only a fraction of the troops which are deployed for training will be able to get back inside the PDC.
1C) Allow a unit commanders training bonus to be applied to that unit, even if it's not part of a parent formation. This would give more balance between the training and combat bonuses - a commander might have a lousy combat bonus, but still be a useful battalion commander because he's an excellent trainer.
1D) Split morale up into two pieces, similar to the way fleet quality has been split up. One bonus is intrinsic unit grade, similar to a ship's grade points. This one is only improved by the unit's commander, i.e. suggestion 1C above, and is diluted by replacements for combat losses. The other is "combined arms" training, i.e how well it fits into its brigade. This is the current morale - it's boosted by the rating of the commander of the parent HQ when the unit is deployed to the planet's surface, reduces when a unit switches formation, and is similar to the current Fleet training value (whatever it's called).
2) Have you thought any about "hostile environment" ground combat penalties? Something like the colony cost of the world being fought on, times some multiplier according to unit type (e.g. HVA receives a lower penalty than low tech infantry - this would be another region where marines excel, or it might be a different unit type). This would make it harder to invade a home world with a hostile environment for your race.
3) I'd like to see a stronger coupling between the original unit used for cadre and the final unit:
3A) Keep the unit name the same in the DB when converting to cadre; you can add " cadre" to the name when you display it.
3B) Assign the cadre unit's name to the unit being trained (and don't increment the unit number counter) when you use cadre to train a new unit (or at least allow this as a checkbox option).
3C) Allow units being trained to be renamed - at present I have to remember what I wanted to name them after they come out. Hmmm - same might be true for units being built in SY.
3D) Keep the grade points/and or morale of the original unit when creating a unit from cadre (this might already be the way it works now - don't know).
John
