Motorized Infantry vs Regular Infantry

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I'm trying to decide whether to go all-in on motorized infantry (4 companies to make a battalion) or mix only 1 motorized infantry company in with 3 regular infantry companies to act as a breakthrough unit. Their overall total health is quite similar, just a 20 HP difference favoring regular infantry but they take a lot less 'shots' per turn due to the lack of guns by comparison.

Code: [Select]

Infantry Company
Transport Size: 999 tons
Build Cost: 272.4 BP
1x Company HQ
101x Infantry (PW)
21x Anti-Personnel Team (CSW)
10x Anti-Vehicle Team (LAV)
3x Anti-Air Team (LAA)


Code: [Select]

Motorized Company
Transport Size: 998 tons
Build Cost: 272.2 BP
1x Company HQ
100x Infantry (PW)
10x Anti-Personnel LFV (CSW)
5x Anti-Vehicle LFV (LAV)
3x Anti-Air LFV (LAA)

PS:
Do you think it would be better to have a 20-man Marine squad with CSW or a 42 man squad with PWs? I like the CSW Marines as it gives you more shots overall and its badass imagining Marines in power armor wielding weapons that would usually need two or three guys themselves. Plus its highly unlikely the crew will be able to pierce Heavy Power Armor. 

[nuclearslurpee]

Motor/Mechanized infantry tend to be more survivable against CAP-heavy enemy formations (which the NPRs tend to have plenty of) at least until you start deploying power armor + gene modded INF which closes most of the gap. This survivability also helps your foot riflemen survive better against CAP since the LVH draw fire away from them over the course of a battle.

However, mechanized infantry tends to be better used if you use the LVH to mount heavier weapons e.g. MAV, MAA, maybe even MAC depending on what kind of opposition you expect to run into instead of sticking to the small versions of those weapons

PS:
Do you think it would be better to have a 20-man Marine squad with CSW or a 42 man squad with PWs? I like the CSW Marines as it gives you more shots overall and its badass imagining Marines in power armor wielding weapons that would usually need two or three guys themselves. Plus its highly unlikely the crew will be able to pierce Heavy Power Armor.

CAP marines are indisputably the strongest possible boarding unit in the absence of any surprises i.e. defensive units carried on the enemy ships. As no NPR that I have ever seen does this you only need to worry about such surprises if you play with multiple player races. However, I would suggest using larger formations, 500 or 1000 tons instead of the 250ish you're proposing here, as smaller squads can run into problems with attrition against larger vessels. Steve's latest campaign is a good example as his several 500-ton Marine formations suffered ~40% losses while capturing a fleet of harvesters, 250-ton forces would likely have been wiped out in the same circumstance.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Motor/Mechanized infantry tend to be more survivable against CAP-heavy enemy formations (which the NPRs tend to have plenty of) at least until you start deploying power armor + gene modded INF which closes most of the gap. This survivability also helps your foot riflemen survive better against CAP since the LVH draw fire away from them over the course of a battle.

However, mechanized infantry tends to be better used if you use the LVH to mount heavier weapons e.g. MAV, MAA, maybe even MAC depending on what kind of opposition you expect to run into instead of sticking to the small versions of those weapons

PS:
Do you think it would be better to have a 20-man Marine squad with CSW or a 42 man squad with PWs? I like the CSW Marines as it gives you more shots overall and its badass imagining Marines in power armor wielding weapons that would usually need two or three guys themselves. Plus its highly unlikely the crew will be able to pierce Heavy Power Armor.

CAP marines are indisputably the strongest possible boarding unit in the absence of any surprises i.e. defensive units carried on the enemy ships. As no NPR that I have ever seen does this you only need to worry about such surprises if you play with multiple player races. However, I would suggest using larger formations, 500 or 1000 tons instead of the 250ish you're proposing here, as smaller squads can run into problems with attrition against larger vessels. Steve's latest campaign is a good example as his several 500-ton Marine formations suffered ~40% losses while capturing a fleet of harvesters, 250-ton forces would likely have been wiped out in the same circumstance.

Can you mount medium weapons on light vehicles? I don't think that was an option for me.

I have a mechanized battalion made up entirely of Medium Vehicles with Heavy Anti-Personal to help with breaking through and mopping up infantry. Its not a MAC, but I thought it would be best since I can then have more IFVs and can fire more shots. NPRs favor infantry-heavy armies I understand, and ideally most of my armor-piecing will come from orbital air support, thought I understand ground fighters still aren't working properly. 

I hope I won't eventually be forced to field infantry all kitted out in power armor. I keep that for my special forces for RP purposes, along with Advanced Genetic Enhancement. Offensive infantry can get Improved Genetic Enhancement tho.

I'd love to have larger formations of Marines but I can't fit them into a fighter or FAC sized ship and I really don't want to build a special ship just for deploying marines. I wish you could split a formation up across multiple ships in the same task force.

[sadoeconomist]

I don't think unarmored infantry should generally be used in attacks except for emergencies, and on defense the light vehicles can't entrench to the same level as the infantry, so I think the motorized company is kind of working against itself in both roles.  The foot infantry company could be a good cheap versatile unit for light defense and policing.  If you want a unit you can put on front line attack to go with the battalion, I'd suggest using one with all light vehicles, but I think you might be better off building a separate battalion entirely for attacking.  Your battalions are small enough that they can specialize and shouldn't be operating independently, so they don't need to cover all tasks on their own.  Maybe you could build something like a regiment of 2 infantry battalions and a light vehicle battalion with some support units and that could hold down a minor colony by itself or be grouped into brigades and divisions on larger ones.

If you're using ground support fighters, make sure to bring forward observers - one of those can direct up to six fighters, so you don't need many.

Defending infantry are mostly protected by fortification bonuses and sheer numbers and not armor, and vehicles are usually a better choice when attacking, so I think it'd be kind of a waste to use armored infantry in entirely ground-based armies under most circumstances.  Power armor is about using a limited tonnage more efficiently and unless you're boarding or dropping from orbit under fire you can move as many tons of troops as you like pretty easily.

I imagine you can get away with using small units of marines to board ships if you make sure to land multiple units at the same time.  There's a fair chance that a given boarding shuttle won't successfully land on its target anyway so redundancy is good.  You could build a light assault carrier in the 10-20 thousand ton range with a number of FACs capable of landing several 250t marine boarding parties at once, with some space for more troops onboard.  Or maybe you could get the same capability by building a cruiser squadron with hangar space for one boarding shuttle in each ship that could conduct boarding attacks with the same number of troops - then all your ships would have some marines on board to defend them, too.

Marines with PWL can be squeezed very tightly into boarding shuttles and can still fight effectively against crew (unless they have way better tech than you, but in that case you're probably not capturing their ships anyway), so unless you expect to face enemy marines they're probably a better choice than PW or PWI.  IIRC CAP marines still put out more shots per ton but PWL doesn't use much supply and can soak more hits, so they might be good to send in first against a very large crew that'll fight a long time.  I haven't run any numbers on it though.  Don't forget to bring supply with your marines, too.

[nuclearslurpee]

Can you mount medium weapons on light vehicles? I don't think that was an option for me.

Yes you can. My Mech Inf battalions usually have CAP, MAV, and MAA vehicles supporting the infantry.

I have a mechanized battalion made up entirely of Medium Vehicles with Heavy Anti-Personal to help with breaking through and mopping up infantry. Its not a MAC, but I thought it would be best since I can then have more IFVs and can fire more shots. NPRs favor infantry-heavy armies I understand, and ideally most of my armor-piecing will come from orbital air support, thought I understand ground fighters still aren't working properly.

At equal tech, HCAP doesn't give you a lot that CAP doesn't but it will help you penetrate light vehicles and static elements. MAC is more effective against both of these though but as you note is quite heavy. If the NPR has higher armor tech then HCAP can help cover that gap for you.

Ground attack fighters I believe work fine, they just suffer from being targeted by both STOs and AA which makes them very vulnerable unless you're willing to orbital-bombard the STOs first. Even then AA is quite effective.

I hope I won't eventually be forced to field infantry all kitted out in power armor. I keep that for my special forces for RP purposes, along with Advanced Genetic Enhancement. Offensive infantry can get Improved Genetic Enhancement tho.

Not forced, and if you don't want to then light vehicles remain very useful. However if you use infantry offensively, armor + HP enhancement is optimal as you want to maximize combat power per ton for an offensive formation (assuming drop transport capacity is the limiting factor). On defense then cheaper units are good to maximize combat power per unit cost.

I'd love to have larger formations of Marines but I can't fit them into a fighter or FAC sized ship and I really don't want to build a special ship just for deploying marines. I wish you could split a formation up across multiple ships in the same task force.

One option to get 500-ton formations is to use a FAC-sized ship with a boosted engine and low fuel range to get enough speed, and deploy them from a carrier. Otherwise, 250-ton units are fine as long as you commit to using multiple of them for most boarding attempts. The important thing is to have sufficient total tonnage and not rely on just 250 tons of marines to capture entire enemy fleets.

I don't think unarmored infantry should generally be used in attacks except for emergencies, and on defense the light vehicles can't entrench to the same level as the infantry, so I think the motorized company is kind of working against itself in both roles.  The foot infantry company could be a good cheap versatile unit for light defense and policing.  If you want a unit you can put on front line attack to go with the battalion, I'd suggest using one with all light vehicles, but I think you might be better off building a separate battalion entirely for attacking.  Your battalions are small enough that they can specialize and shouldn't be operating independently, so they don't need to cover all tasks on their own.  Maybe you could build something like a regiment of 2 infantry battalions and a light vehicle battalion with some support units and that could hold down a minor colony by itself or be grouped into brigades and divisions on larger ones.

Infantry works best in a combined-arms role i.e. if you also bring tank/armored battalions into the attack force. They will draw anti-tank fire away from the vehicles to reduce the enemy's tonnage kill rate somewhat, and are also fairly effective at killing enemy infantry. So it can be useful on the attack as well even if infantry by itself is not a strong attacking unit.

Defending infantry are mostly protected by fortification bonuses and sheer numbers and not armor, and vehicles are usually a better choice when attacking, so I think it'd be kind of a waste to use armored infantry in entirely ground-based armies under most circumstances.  Power armor is about using a limited tonnage more efficiently and unless you're boarding or dropping from orbit under fire you can move as many tons of troops as you like pretty easily.

All things being equal, armored infantry would perform substantially better even on the defensive. However on the defensive you want to maximize based on cost which means unarmored infantry gives you more boots on the ground. On offense you usually maximize for tonnage efficiency due to limits on transport capacity, thus armor becomes more important.

I imagine you can get away with using small units of marines to board ships if you make sure to land multiple units at the same time.  There's a fair chance that a given boarding shuttle won't successfully land on its target anyway so redundancy is good.  You could build a light assault carrier in the 10-20 thousand ton range with a number of FACs capable of landing several 250t marine boarding parties at once, with some space for more troops onboard.  Or maybe you could get the same capability by building a cruiser squadron with hangar space for one boarding shuttle in each ship that could conduct boarding attacks with the same number of troops - then all your ships would have some marines on board to defend them, too.

All excellent ideas. Note that landing is on a per-element basis not a per-shuttle basis, but multiple shuttles does still improve the chances of landing enough troops to take the ship which is the idea here.

Marines with PWL can be squeezed very tightly into boarding shuttles and can still fight effectively against crew (unless they have way better tech than you, but in that case you're probably not capturing their ships anyway), so unless you expect to face enemy marines they're probably a better choice than PW or PWI.  IIRC CAP marines still put out more shots per ton but PWL doesn't use much supply and can soak more hits, so they might be good to send in first against a very large crew that'll fight a long time.  I haven't run any numbers on it though.  Don't forget to bring supply with your marines, too.

PWL is the second-most effective unit against equal tech (after CAP), but if the enemy has even one tech level of armor more than you it will fail badly. CAP is largely immune to this for boarding combat. You do save on supplies with PWL but I'm not sure that's a major concern for marine forces as their overall small size means supplying them is not too expensive. Maybe logistically difficult.

Fights against crews of a higher tech level are not as uncommon as you might think, notably if you board Precursor ships you can expect this to be the case unless you're waiting for tech parity to start that fight - I for one don't wait.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

If I'm understanding it right, one major limitation with Space Marines seems to be that every turn the ENTIRE crew is able to take a shot at the Marines, who they will usually outnumber by a lot due to the limitations in boarding-ship capacities. Even with Heavy Power Armor, the crew can kill them with a thousand cuts. Realistically, this would not be the case as the ship would be too narrow for more than a few guys to shoot down a hallway at a time, and the crew would be dispersed throughout the ship while the Marines are concentrated. Think Space Hulk for reference.

I wonder if Steve would consider adding a 'combat width' mechanic in certain instances which would limit the amount of troops that can fire in a turn. EU4 has a system like this.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Combat_width&redirect=no

[nuclearslurpee]

If I'm understanding it right, one major limitation with Space Marines seems to be that every turn the ENTIRE crew is able to take a shot at the Marines, who they will usually outnumber by a lot due to the limitations in boarding-ship capacities. Even with Heavy Power Armor, the crew can kill them with a thousand cuts. Realistically, this would not be the case as the ship would be too narrow for more than a few guys to shoot down a hallway at a time, and the crew would be dispersed throughout the ship while the Marines are concentrated. Think Space Hulk for reference.

I wonder if Steve would consider adding a 'combat width' mechanic in certain instances which would limit the amount of troops that can fire in a turn. EU4 has a system like this.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Combat_width&redirect=no

It's not as much of a limitation as you would think. The ship crew are modeled as unarmored INF+PWL with 50% racial armor and attack tech.This means that for each hit they score, they only have a very small kill rate. Against equal-tech boarding INF marines with no extra armor or HP, PWL will score one kill for every 256 actual hits. Meanwhile, every hit from marines with equal tech will result in a kill, and even if the crew race has better tech this remains the case for every weapon except PWL.

If you board a ship with a crew of, say, 500 with a 500-ton formation of CAP marines (500 / 12 = 41 marines, let's say 40 plus 10-ton commander and supply elements just to have even numbers). Base accuracy is 20%, the INF marines have 0.6 evasion which reduces that to 12%, and the INF crew has fortification level 2 which reduces the marines' accuracy to 10%. In the first round of combat the crew will score about 60 hits, so there is a ~23% chance of losing one marine. Meanwhile, the marines will fire 40 x 6 = 240 shots and score about 24 hits/kills. To sum up, this means marines will kill the enemy crew at about 100x efficiency in this scenario, and as it will take about 20-25 rounds to kill the entire crew will take a single-digit number of losses in the process, about 10-20% casualties.

Note that if you instead attacked with a 250-ton formation (20 CAP marines), this would take twice as long and the crew would inflict roughly twice as many casualties, still probably in the range of 10-15 which is a small absolute value but represents 50-75% of your formation in that case. If you used a 1000-ton formation, now you're killing that crew in 10-12 rounds of combat and only losing 3-4 marines (about 5% casualties). So the benefits of larger (or multiple) formations are very significant.

The attrition problem is one good argument for using PWL instead of CAP (or even PW if you expect to run into tech disparities), but I prefer to just use larger formations as PWL is easily frustrated by even a slight tech disadvantage. Alternatively a mix of PW/PWL and CAP marines can give you extra bodies to absorb losses without losing as much firepower per lost marine, although I'm not sure where the optimal point is here if any.

The quadratic nature of tech differences in ground combat in general is a rather unique feature compared to naval combat where the tech advantage is not so pronounced and good design, doctrine, and numerical superiority can carry a lot more weight in relative terms.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

If I'm understanding it right, one major limitation with Space Marines seems to be that every turn the ENTIRE crew is able to take a shot at the Marines, who they will usually outnumber by a lot due to the limitations in boarding-ship capacities. Even with Heavy Power Armor, the crew can kill them with a thousand cuts. Realistically, this would not be the case as the ship would be too narrow for more than a few guys to shoot down a hallway at a time, and the crew would be dispersed throughout the ship while the Marines are concentrated. Think Space Hulk for reference.

I wonder if Steve would consider adding a 'combat width' mechanic in certain instances which would limit the amount of troops that can fire in a turn. EU4 has a system like this.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Combat_width&redirect=no

It's not as much of a limitation as you would think. The ship crew are modeled as unarmored INF+PWL with 50% racial armor and attack tech.This means that for each hit they score, they only have a very small kill rate. Against equal-tech boarding INF marines with no extra armor or HP, PWL will score one kill for every 256 actual hits. Meanwhile, every hit from marines with equal tech will result in a kill, and even if the crew race has better tech this remains the case for every weapon except PWL.

If you board a ship with a crew of, say, 500 with a 500-ton formation of CAP marines (500 / 12 = 41 marines, let's say 40 plus 10-ton commander and supply elements just to have even numbers). Base accuracy is 20%, the INF marines have 0.6 evasion which reduces that to 12%, and the INF crew has fortification level 2 which reduces the marines' accuracy to 10%. In the first round of combat the crew will score about 60 hits, so there is a ~23% chance of losing one marine. Meanwhile, the marines will fire 40 x 6 = 240 shots and score about 24 hits/kills. To sum up, this means marines will kill the enemy crew at about 100x efficiency in this scenario, and as it will take about 20-25 rounds to kill the entire crew will take a single-digit number of losses in the process, about 10-20% casualties.

Note that if you instead attacked with a 250-ton formation (20 CAP marines), this would take twice as long and the crew would inflict roughly twice as many casualties, still probably in the range of 10-15 which is a small absolute value but represents 50-75% of your formation in that case. If you used a 1000-ton formation, now you're killing that crew in 10-12 rounds of combat and only losing 3-4 marines (about 5% casualties). So the benefits of larger (or multiple) formations are very significant.

The attrition problem is one good argument for using PWL instead of CAP (or even PW if you expect to run into tech disparities), but I prefer to just use larger formations as PWL is easily frustrated by even a slight tech disadvantage. Alternatively a mix of PW/PWL and CAP marines can give you extra bodies to absorb losses without losing as much firepower per lost marine, although I'm not sure where the optimal point is here if any.

The quadratic nature of tech differences in ground combat in general is a rather unique feature compared to naval combat where the tech advantage is not so pronounced and good design, doctrine, and numerical superiority can carry a lot more weight in relative terms.

So the best design is to use multiple Marine companies (or rather combat teams at those numbers) together. That is more than doable, you can even unite them all under a single HQ that goes along to actually fight with them like some sort of 40k Space Marine Honor Guard. Only problem is that each one of those small teams needs an officer to lead it, which is less than ideal from a practical and role-play purpose. When I trained my first Regiment of NORMAL troops I ran out of low-ranking captains quite quickly. Hopefully the new Ground Officer School I'm building on Mars will boost things, but Ground Officers are relatively rare it seems. I might have to abandon modeling down to the company level...

[Droll]

If I'm understanding it right, one major limitation with Space Marines seems to be that every turn the ENTIRE crew is able to take a shot at the Marines, who they will usually outnumber by a lot due to the limitations in boarding-ship capacities. Even with Heavy Power Armor, the crew can kill them with a thousand cuts. Realistically, this would not be the case as the ship would be too narrow for more than a few guys to shoot down a hallway at a time, and the crew would be dispersed throughout the ship while the Marines are concentrated. Think Space Hulk for reference.

I wonder if Steve would consider adding a 'combat width' mechanic in certain instances which would limit the amount of troops that can fire in a turn. EU4 has a system like this.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Combat_width&redirect=no

It's not as much of a limitation as you would think. The ship crew are modeled as unarmored INF+PWL with 50% racial armor and attack tech.This means that for each hit they score, they only have a very small kill rate. Against equal-tech boarding INF marines with no extra armor or HP, PWL will score one kill for every 256 actual hits. Meanwhile, every hit from marines with equal tech will result in a kill, and even if the crew race has better tech this remains the case for every weapon except PWL.

If you board a ship with a crew of, say, 500 with a 500-ton formation of CAP marines (500 / 12 = 41 marines, let's say 40 plus 10-ton commander and supply elements just to have even numbers). Base accuracy is 20%, the INF marines have 0.6 evasion which reduces that to 12%, and the INF crew has fortification level 2 which reduces the marines' accuracy to 10%. In the first round of combat the crew will score about 60 hits, so there is a ~23% chance of losing one marine. Meanwhile, the marines will fire 40 x 6 = 240 shots and score about 24 hits/kills. To sum up, this means marines will kill the enemy crew at about 100x efficiency in this scenario, and as it will take about 20-25 rounds to kill the entire crew will take a single-digit number of losses in the process, about 10-20% casualties.

Note that if you instead attacked with a 250-ton formation (20 CAP marines), this would take twice as long and the crew would inflict roughly twice as many casualties, still probably in the range of 10-15 which is a small absolute value but represents 50-75% of your formation in that case. If you used a 1000-ton formation, now you're killing that crew in 10-12 rounds of combat and only losing 3-4 marines (about 5% casualties). So the benefits of larger (or multiple) formations are very significant.

The attrition problem is one good argument for using PWL instead of CAP (or even PW if you expect to run into tech disparities), but I prefer to just use larger formations as PWL is easily frustrated by even a slight tech disadvantage. Alternatively a mix of PW/PWL and CAP marines can give you extra bodies to absorb losses without losing as much firepower per lost marine, although I'm not sure where the optimal point is here if any.

The quadratic nature of tech differences in ground combat in general is a rather unique feature compared to naval combat where the tech advantage is not so pronounced and good design, doctrine, and numerical superiority can carry a lot more weight in relative terms.

So the best design is to use multiple Marine companies (or rather combat teams at those numbers) together. That is more than doable, you can even unite them all under a single HQ that goes along to actually fight with them like some sort of 40k Space Marine Honor Guard. Only problem is that each one of those small teams needs an officer to lead it, which is less than ideal from a practical and role-play purpose. When I trained my first Regiment of NORMAL troops I ran out of low-ranking captains quite quickly. Hopefully the new Ground Officer School I'm building on Mars will boost things, but Ground Officers are relatively rare it seems. I might have to abandon modeling down to the company level...

As someone else how also models down to company level you seem to be correct that ground officers are more rare. I solved my problem by making more academies AND setting some of them to have a ground officer commandant. A commandant on a level 10 academy will make it give out ground officers as if it was level 20. After around a decade of slowing down a little on GU training it seems like I can now staff my military

[nuclearslurpee]

So the best design is to use multiple Marine companies (or rather combat teams at those numbers) together. That is more than doable, you can even unite them all under a single HQ that goes along to actually fight with them like some sort of 40k Space Marine Honor Guard. Only problem is that each one of those small teams needs an officer to lead it, which is less than ideal from a practical and role-play purpose. When I trained my first Regiment of NORMAL troops I ran out of low-ranking captains quite quickly. Hopefully the new Ground Officer School I'm building on Mars will boost things, but Ground Officers are relatively rare it seems. I might have to abandon modeling down to the company level...

As someone else how also models down to company level you seem to be correct that ground officers are more rare. I solved my problem by making more academies AND setting some of them to have a ground officer commandant. A commandant on a level 10 academy will make it give out ground officers as if it was level 20. After around a decade of slowing down a little on GU training it seems like I can now staff my military

Modeling to the company level in Aurora is generally a bit of a waste anyways, as not only are commanders a bit scarce but the amount of micromanagement required with so many small units is painful when making serious ground assaults with 100s kilotons of ground troops. There's a reason most players who aren't pure RPers use 5,000-ton battalions at a minimum, and I often see players use 10,000 or even 20,000 tons as their base formation size.

Honestly the ground commander mechanic in general needs some TLC, you end up with a lot of officers with very small force command limits who are nearly useless (at least they should be, I think the command limits are bugged actually - again, TLC needed). I honestly would just remove the commander force size limits entirely as they're more hassle than they're worth and frankly limit RP quite a bit.

I'd also like to see some staff officer roles added to HQs similar to how we have command components on ships to give ground officers more interesting careers. My ideal formation structure would be to have the same 2:1 ratio between ranks as in the naval forces so that a HQ could have on average two staff officers and four attached formations and the promotion structure would fit this well. VB6 had a 4:1 ratio that also worked well with the lack of staff officers, but the 3:1 ratio in C# is just awkward for anyone who likes to mirror real force structures as it matches poorly with the triangular + support structure that is very common in real OOBs.

Now I'm off-topic though...

[Borealis4x (OP)]

So the best design is to use multiple Marine companies (or rather combat teams at those numbers) together. That is more than doable, you can even unite them all under a single HQ that goes along to actually fight with them like some sort of 40k Space Marine Honor Guard. Only problem is that each one of those small teams needs an officer to lead it, which is less than ideal from a practical and role-play purpose. When I trained my first Regiment of NORMAL troops I ran out of low-ranking captains quite quickly. Hopefully the new Ground Officer School I'm building on Mars will boost things, but Ground Officers are relatively rare it seems. I might have to abandon modeling down to the company level...

As someone else how also models down to company level you seem to be correct that ground officers are more rare. I solved my problem by making more academies AND setting some of them to have a ground officer commandant. A commandant on a level 10 academy will make it give out ground officers as if it was level 20. After around a decade of slowing down a little on GU training it seems like I can now staff my military

Modeling to the company level in Aurora is generally a bit of a waste anyways, as not only are commanders a bit scarce but the amount of micromanagement required with so many small units is painful when making serious ground assaults with 100s kilotons of ground troops. There's a reason most players who aren't pure RPers use 5,000-ton battalions at a minimum, and I often see players use 10,000 or even 20,000 tons as their base formation size.

Honestly the ground commander mechanic in general needs some TLC, you end up with a lot of officers with very small force command limits who are nearly useless (at least they should be, I think the command limits are bugged actually - again, TLC needed). I honestly would just remove the commander force size limits entirely as they're more hassle than they're worth and frankly limit RP quite a bit.

I'd also like to see some staff officer roles added to HQs similar to how we have command components on ships to give ground officers more interesting careers. My ideal formation structure would be to have the same 2:1 ratio between ranks as in the naval forces so that a HQ could have on average two staff officers and four attached formations and the promotion structure would fit this well. VB6 had a 4:1 ratio that also worked well with the lack of staff officers, but the 3:1 ratio in C# is just awkward for anyone who likes to mirror real force structures as it matches poorly with the triangular + support structure that is very common in real OOBs.

Now I'm off-topic though...

Honestly, the whole reason I decided to model down to the company level in the first place was because I hated how you'd have Majors leading small teams of Marines and I thought Captains would be better. So obviously now everything has to be made up of companies sized units to keep things consistent.

If I could transport a single 1000 ton Marine unit across 4 250 ton capacity dropships this wouldn't be an issue, but right now a single formation has to fit inside a single ship. I hope this gets changed later on, but I doubt it as I feel that would be the case already if it were possible.

[misanthropope]

accepting nuclearslurpee's accuracy and lethality because dammit im too lazy to check,

a CAP marine squares off on equal footing against sqrt(1280) ~= 35.77 crewmen
a PWL marine (without tech disadvantage) matches up with sqrt(213.33) ~= 14.65 crewmen

both of these can be demonstrated by looking at the average % casualties in the first round.

PWL are considerably better for the role; although 500 tons of CAP could win a bigger fight than 250 tons of PWL, against the enemy provided (500 crew) i calculate the PWL would take less losses by cost.  [7.7 PWL die vs 2.5 CAP]

[nuclearslurpee]

accepting nuclearslurpee's accuracy and lethality because dammit im too lazy to check,

a CAP marine squares off on equal footing against sqrt(1280) ~= 35.77 crewmen
a PWL marine (without tech disadvantage) matches up with sqrt(213.33) ~= 14.65 crewmen

both of these can be demonstrated by looking at the average % casualties in the first round.

PWL are considerably better for the role; although 500 tons of CAP could win a bigger fight than 250 tons of PWL, against the enemy provided (500 crew) i calculate the PWL would take less losses by cost.  [7.7 PWL die vs 2.5 CAP]

How are you calculating those numbers? I don't understand the process here

If you have 500 tons of CAP (~40 CAP marines for round numbers), as estimated above you kill a crew of 500 in 20-25 rounds suffering single-digit casualties - in 25 rounds you can expect 6-7 casualties or ~15% to ~18% casualties. Again this is against unarmored, unmodded marines for the record.

If 500 tons of PWL that's ~160 PWL marines but these have a kill rate 2/3 of the CAP marines despite superior numbers since each PWL only fires one shot per round (vs 6 for CAP). It will then take around 30-40 rounds to kill off the crew during which you would take 7-10 casualties i.e. ~5% to 6.25%. Since cost is proportional to tonnage, this does mean PWL will be cheaper in the long run if you want to optimize by cost. I won't run the math for supply consumption but the result will also be in favor of PWL by a lot.

So for cost of replacements PWL marines will perform better, however I do want to point out some other factors in favor of CAP marines besides their overall high kill rate.

• My math is for base INF, but marines usually have the best armor and HP mods available, which drastically reduces the crew's kill rate. With 2 armor and 2 HP at maximum techs in those lines, loss rates will be fractional i.e. <1 marine killed per combat. Side note: this makes smaller marine companies e.g. 250 tons more viable at higher techs since the attrition problem is solved.
• PWL falls off hard at even the slightest tech disadvantage, whereas CAP does not. Even if you don't expect to ever fight an enemy with superior armor tech, you can likely match the cost savings of PWL in combat by simply not replacing your CAP marines as often as you must with PWL due to the half-racial armor of crewmen.
• CAP faster kill rate can make a difference if you conduct boarding operations against disabled ships during active combat (often this is necessary to capture a ship before it effects repairs and becomes a combatant again).

[misanthropope]

theres a couple things, the one i think you're asking about is how one gets to the final expected body count with precision?  it's a handy trick, and one that shows up across many games.

if firepower diminishes proportionately to hit points, if units are homogeneous on each side (or at least multiple classes on average will die at the same percentage rate as damage is taken), and if combat is continuous, or at least attrition in each round is small compared to force totals, combat can be modeled with the paired differential equations.  -oh, you also need all units participating every round, or at least a consistent fraction.

dy/dt = -cX
dx/dt = -kY

c is the per unit firepower of y divided by the per unit hit points of x.

if you need to solve it yourself, the easiest way is to divide the first diff eq by the second [exploiting the chain rule], and then you have a separable equation (ie two easy integrals) in just X and Y.  the solution, solved for the state of Y being zero (assuming X is the more powerful force), is
(cX)^2 = (cXo)^2 - (KYo)^2, where Xo and Yo are the initial force totals.  quadratic formula inna house, yo

dividing both sides by k and simplifying leads to the intuitive result that sqrt(c/k) represents the exchange rate between the units on each side, that is, sqrt[ (firepower{x}*hitpoints{x})/(firepower{y}*hitpoints{y}) ] = the numbor of Ys that each X is worth

like i said, a lot of games fit the model pretty adequately. you gotta work pretty hard as designer to avoid the model, and unfortunately it tends to yield lopsided results for modest advantages. 

aurora ground combat snowballs a bit worse than this because of the compounding effects of morale and breakthroughs, but for boarding actions the effects are pretty small.

[nuclearslurpee]

It's been a while since I did ODE systems so I'll have to trust your figures here I think.

In my analysis I generally neglected the decrease in kill rate due to losses/attrition as the analysis qualitatively does not really change (in fact for low loss rates on the attacker/marines side you can get a very close estimate of the final losses by halving my figures, but the ratios remain the same between CAP and PWL for instance).