Question about organizing your ground forces.

[LuuBluum]

Ah, so it should play smoothly enough then, assuming I don't make it so nuanced that I can't produce enough officers.  I was thinking only company-level anyway (gotta have those HHCs), so that should be fine.

[nuclearslurpee]

assuming I don't make it so nuanced that I can't produce enough officers.

If you are playing with player races only, this is entirely manageable. However, some food for thought:

A ground unit training facility (GFTF) without any tech upgrades produces, IIRC, 240 BP of ground units per year. With the exception of HQ units, ground units cost 0.02*size*armor*capabilities (if any). I tend to find that on average, at least in the early game my ground units probably average about 2 armor across the various base unit types (later on with heavier units and advanced capabilities this can increase), so roughly we can estimate that 1000 tons of ground units, or roughly one company, costs about 40 BP, so with no additional tech investments a ground forces facility can train about six companies per year.

By contrast, the rate at which a single military academy produces new generals is 1.25 generals per year normally (25% chance per new leader), which can be pushed up to 2.75 generals per year (55% chance) with a ground forces commandant for that academy.

For a typical TN start, at 500m pop a race receives 4 GFTFs and one academy. On 2b pop this increases to 10 GFTFs and 2 academies. Either way your rate of ground unit production (24 or 60 companies per annum) greatly outpaces your rate of general production (max 2.75 or 5.5 per annum).

So the moral of the story here is something like: if you are going to have a multi-player-race campaign to enjoy company-size formations, you probably want to underbuild GFTFs so as not to overwhelm your leadership structure. Something like 1 GFTF per colony which is large enough to support one is probably a suitable balance. Alternatively you could use the additional starting GFTFs to churn out STOs which could be fun, as STOs build pretty slowly especially if built with heavy armor. On a conventional start I believe you only get one starting GFTF so this is even easier to work around.

The other consideration which follows from this is how you apply your GU structures to your roleplay setting. Say you start with ~50 ground commanders plus 2.5 a year (I like round numbers, sue me), after ten years your low-rank officers start retiring and you have a rough equilbrium of ~100 ground commanders (assuming just the one academy for the moment). With 3:1 rank ratios and auto-promotions you're looking at around 70 Majors, 25 Colonels, 10 Brigadiers, and a couple of modern major generals to run the joint, which comes out to about three divisions (one corps, if you have a Lt. General sitting around to command it) of troops more or less. For a multi-system star empire ruling over hundreds of millions of civilians, three divisions is not a lot. This doesn't have to be a problem per se, but it is something you want to think about as you RP your interstellar empire.

[LuuBluum]

So in short, lots of academies?

[nuclearslurpee]

Well, yes, that too.

[Garfunkel]

I actually tested the small vs big formations with Gyrfalcon and while what xenoscepter wrote is true, the effect is small and can be overcome with just leader bonuses or more units or better tech. You can read it here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11328.0

The conclusion was:

again, none of the simulations presented has demonstrated an edge to be gained that would suffice against an opponent even 10% stronger than you.

So don't worry about making lot of small formations - if you have superior tech or numbers, you'll still win even against NPRs.

[db48x]

In principle, going off of the rank names is a great way for a new player to approach the game. In practice, the rank themes were all created long ago, for versions of the game no new player should ever play; there’s no guarantee that any of them are really appropriate.

Also, the meanings of rank names have changed wildly over the centuries; you can stretch them to mean anything you want. 2500 years ago, a Greek army had about 100 fighting men in it, and it was commanded by a general. What they called a war was really just a single battle, after which everyone went home. Strategy and tactics were literally the same thing.

[LuuBluum]

Indeed; I wouldn't be surprised if GUs scale doesn't end up the same way as ship scale, with things just getting bigger and bigger and bigger as campaigns go on.  Though that won't help with the lack of officers, just the breakthrough problem.

[nuclearslurpee]

Also, the meanings of rank names have changed wildly over the centuries; you can stretch them to mean anything you want.

While this is true...

2500 years ago, a Greek army had about 100 fighting men in it, and it was commanded by a general. What they called a war was really just a single battle, after which everyone went home. Strategy and tactics were literally the same thing.

...this emphatically is not. Even accounting for the tendency of ancient writers like Herodotus to not let facts get in the way of a rousing narrative.

Non-historicity aside, even if the rank names can be stretched at will they are certainly most likely to be understood in a relatively modern context, and it is reasonable to at least give consideration to what the implications of that are particularly for newer players taking their cues from in-game clues...there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

[Froggiest1982]

there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

Yes, the max tonnage amount to command...like the rank restriction wasn't already enough! sometimes I imagine Steve reading the forum and laugh his guts out while he plays a different version of Aurora that we ignore the existence.

 

I would personally remove it, I may have at read at some point that it was going to be...the lines between imagination, reality, and hope is getting more blurred by the day.

[nuclearslurpee]

there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

Yes, the max tonnage amount to command...like the rank restriction wasn't already enough! sometimes I imagine Steve reading the forum and laugh his guts out while he plays a different version of Aurora that we ignore the existence.

 

I would personally remove it, I may have at read at some point that it was going to be...the lines between imagination, reality, and hope is getting more blurred by the day.

Ground combat command skill, which set the tonnage limit you mention, was removed in 1.13 although it is still visible in the commander sorting window (you can see that it is 0 for all leaders). I actually remember discussing that particular change with Steve.

[Density]

there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

Yes, the max tonnage amount to command...like the rank restriction wasn't already enough! sometimes I imagine Steve reading the forum and laugh his guts out while he plays a different version of Aurora that we ignore the existence.

 

I would personally remove it, I may have at read at some point that it was going to be...the lines between imagination, reality, and hope is getting more blurred by the day.

And the required rank to command a formation can be changed.

[rainyday]

there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

I would also suggest that Troop Transport Bays have a similar effect and should be adjusted. That 1000 tons is "standard" and 5000 tons is "large" is a bit silly at present when my mainline troopships have 20 of those large bays. I know people really love their fighter-sized boarding craft so I don't want to take away options at the low end but since it's all one research now maybe it would make sense to have Tiny and Fighter Troop Transport Bays and bump all the existing ones up.

Large should be 20-25K at least.

With the removal of the ground command limit, one of my setup tasks is changing the lowest rank to Colonel and just building regiments as my smallest ground unit, but I don't tend to bother with marines at all.

[db48x]

2500 years ago, a Greek army had about 100 fighting men in it, and it was commanded by a general. What they called a war was really just a single battle, after which everyone went home. Strategy and tactics were literally the same thing.

...this emphatically is not. Even accounting for the tendency of ancient writers like Herodotus to not let facts get in the way of a rousing narrative.

Sorry, I should be more precise in my dates. The Battle of Marathon was indeed 2500 years ago, but it is at the end of the ancient Greek era where the phalanx was used. Pretend I said 2800 years ago instead. The size of a Greek army rose gradually over the three hundred years leading up to this point as the Greek city states grew in wealth and population. It was also a war of Greeks vs Persians, rather than a war between two Greek city states.

Non-historicity aside, even if the rank names can be stretched at will they are certainly most likely to be understood in a relatively modern context, and it is reasonable to at least give consideration to what the implications of that are particularly for newer players taking their cues from in-game clues...there are few other game elements which actively mislead the player, in the way that default rank systems which implicitly suggest that ~1,000-ton companies are a good idea do.

I don’t disagree; in fact I said as much in my previous comment. The rank themes were all put into the database long ago, and even back then there were arguments about whether the names of the military units matched up with the rank names. It is therefore not surprising that they are misleading; they were not designed to guide us towards good army design in the current iteration of Aurora. They were not really designed at all, in fact.