Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: August 09, 2022, 08:00:07 AM »You can use ships to target STO's but not ground forces. You'll just have to hope to get lucky.
Either approach is fine. As long as the overall balance of firepower is a suitable match for your opponent you can divide weapons among units however you like. One advantage of separate unit types is that you can drop 4xHCAP Titans in the initial wave of landings, gain intelligence on the enemy, and then choose what following waves look like based on that intelligence.
Was that actually proven?
It follows directly from the mechanics. See Steve post here as well as empirical testing done here. This documentation is actually hard to find, since the feature was added much later than the main ground combat mechanics, but it is there.
For sake of example, consider a formation of 5,000 tons, with one or two INF+HQ5 command units (25 tons each) and the rest INF+PW (5 tons each). The HQ5 units are built as non-combat, which confers a 80% reduction in size for targeting purposes (i.e., enemy units are 20% as likely to target an element of this unit type) as well as an 80% penalty to firing accuracy. This means that the HQ is treated as a 5-ton unit for targeting purposes, rather than a 25-ton unit.
So for a formation with 1 HQ and 995 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (1*5) / (1*5 + 995*5) = 0.1004%.
For a formation with 2 HQ and 990 PW infantry, the probability for the HQ to be targeted if this formation is targeted is: (2*5) / (2*5 + 990*5) = 0.2016%. Since there are two HQs, there is a relative 50% chance for the formation commander to be killed if a HQ unit is destroyed, relative to the single-HQ formation, so the odds of the commander being killed are 0.1008% - as I said, slightly higher.
I have noted that commanders of ground formations do not always die when their HQs are destroyed, but if there is some fixed multiplier it should not change the math at all.
Now, there may possibly be some effect for preserving the overall HQ chain of command even if the commander dies. As far as I can tell, this is difficult and quite likely impossible to show theoretically for a general case because the overall loss rate of the formation(s) involved is necessary to include in a calculation, but it might be a present effect. However, the fact that HQ elements are so expensive (4x as much as any other component except STOs) means that it is not really worth it, IMO, as you usually need to squeeze every BP of ground units you can out of your training centers to build a large enough army to assault a NPR home world.
Was that actually proven?
The command Brigade. Since we got space to spare, why not two HQ (Size 50000)?
Command Brigade
Transport Size: 12,496 tons
Build Cost: 426.2 BP
2x HQ Emplacment Brigade
8x Construction Vehicles
100x Supply Infantery
3x Space Marine Recon
59x Artillery Emplacement Warden Class
Artillery Battalion
Transport Size: 12,475 tons
Build Cost: 679.7 BP
1x HQ Emplacment Battalion
40x Supply Infantery
200x Artillery Emplacement Defender Class
Space Marine Battalion
Transport Size: 12,495 tons
Build Cost: 1,217.8 BP
1x Space Marine Battalion Leader
737x Space Marine
200x Space Marine Destroyer
200x Space Marine Terminator
9x Supply Infantery
6x Anti Vehicle Emplacement Fortress Class
Titan Battle Battalion Paladin
Transport Size: 12,455 tons
Build Cost: 506.9 BP
35x Titan Paladin Class
4x Supply Infantery
1x HQ Emplacment Battalion
I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
Actually, for modern tanks the crew is usually responsible for the daily maintenance of the vehicle - this is one reason why the M1 Abrams uses four crewmen with a dedicated loader as opposed to the three-man crew with an autoloader that some other countries (Russia...) uses - the fourth man makes maintenance a lot easier especially for such a complex design as the Abrams. You do of course have prodigious support personnel including workshop elements but these are held at a higher level, battalion or higher.Yes... this is how I calculate the numbers in my units... allot of people in military units is not even combat personnel. Every soldier and vehicle need support as well, so the numbers I calculate for "personnel" is not just the number of soldiers. Vehicle obviously include mechanics, crew and support of that crew. Support units sort of also represent crew, so they are part of the military organisation. In general I include some supplies in all units as then count that as the support staff of the units.
A light vehicle would probably be at least five people including the crew, heavier vehicle a few more... after this I can get the true personnel in my formations including the combat personnel.
I usually achieve fairly accurate troop counts when using INF logistics units by considering them to have some number of soldiers (usually 4 works well for the 10-ton units). This works for the first few levels of command, but higher commands which in real life would just be very expansive command and specialized elements (e.g., SIGINT, EWAR) are not modeled in Aurora.When playing multi-faction games really heavy vehicles is quite tricky to use... they generally pay WAY too much for survivability for the firepower they put out. When they are up against light units that have some heavy anti-tank weapons sprinkled about they will struggle, they must be supported by lighter forces as well, most of the time. Just a bunch of cheap Static Heavy Anti-vehicle units will wreak havoc on any super heavy vehicles in the opposing side, especially of they have a small advantage in weapon tech over your armour tech. Plasma weapons also seem common in my games for the cheap ground weapon tech advantage, so heavy vehicle can be of dubious use if too numerous.
I think HVH are fine if you don't over-armor them, the extra 18 tons comes with a 50% HP boost and with just medium armor they are not too expensive...if you put the heaviest weapons in your army on them (each tank is 100+ tons) the lost tonnage efficiency is not critical at all. That being said, I think the main use of HVH in a multi-faction game is to force the opponent to deploy a counter, as with real life the arms race is as much or more about perception of threat than actual threat.
I always imagined that vehicles had both combat staff (e.g. drivers, gunners) and non-combat staff (e.g. mechanics, the-guy-who-polishes-all-the-statues-on-the-Baneblade) included in their tonnage. Similar to how modern fighter jets have 1 or 2 flight crew and potentially dozens of ground crew.
Yes... this is how I calculate the numbers in my units... allot of people in military units is not even combat personnel. Every soldier and vehicle need support as well, so the numbers I calculate for "personnel" is not just the number of soldiers. Vehicle obviously include mechanics, crew and support of that crew. Support units sort of also represent crew, so they are part of the military organisation. In general I include some supplies in all units as then count that as the support staff of the units.
A light vehicle would probably be at least five people including the crew, heavier vehicle a few more... after this I can get the true personnel in my formations including the combat personnel.
When playing multi-faction games really heavy vehicles is quite tricky to use... they generally pay WAY too much for survivability for the firepower they put out. When they are up against light units that have some heavy anti-tank weapons sprinkled about they will struggle, they must be supported by lighter forces as well, most of the time. Just a bunch of cheap Static Heavy Anti-vehicle units will wreak havoc on any super heavy vehicles in the opposing side, especially of they have a small advantage in weapon tech over your armour tech. Plasma weapons also seem common in my games for the cheap ground weapon tech advantage, so heavy vehicle can be of dubious use if too numerous.
I understand personnel sizes for battalions and the like, but I am not talking about that. I am asking about tonnage. The reason I ask is because the tonnage of a VEH (or worse HVH) is considerable compared to infantry. If you design a company to be 8000 tons, you can only squeeze so many tanks in there, even if your PW infantry can meet a company's personnel size. This would defeat the personnel size head canon even if you assume 10 soldiers per VEH (which are commonly 80+ tons vs PW infantry being 5 tons).
Do you custom build your HQ tonnage to have similar personnel quantities when it comes to vehicles?
The OP seems to use 8000 tons for a company, which seems reasonable. What about others?