Author Topic: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas  (Read 1754 times)

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Offline bankshot (OP)

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Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« on: September 05, 2022, 10:34:08 PM »
I've discovered hostile Rakhas on a planet I'd really like to occupy myself, so they must be crushed.  I'd rather not mess up the local real estate so I want to keep orbital strikes to a minimum.  Therefore I'm left with designing a ground force that can clear them out.  My overall doctrine is as follows:

Troop Transports: Regimental transport: 25K capacity
Battalion size:  5K total: 4K combat, and a separate 1K logistics company

Battalions 1&2: Infantry screening units. (4000) Frontline defense All infantry has heavy powered armor.
640x PW
6x LAV
2x LAA
6x LB
42x CAP
2x HQ (4,000 capacity) noncombat

Battalion 3: Medium tanks - VEH with medium armor (3978)  Frontline Attack
61x  MAV/CAP
2x FFD/HQ (4,000 capacity) noncombat

Battalion 4: Heavy tanks - HVH with heavy armor (3976).  Frontline Attack

36x HAV/HCAP
2x FFD/HQ (4,000 capacity)noncombat

Battalion 5: Regimental HQ and artillery (3934) Rear echelon

23x VEH HB/HB medium armor
2x HVH FFD/HQ (25,000 capacity) heavy armor noncombat
1x VEH CON/CON (noncombat)

5x supply companies (992)  support or rear

16x LVH LOG

My invasion doctrine assumes I will have aerospace superiority so I only have token Anti-air capacity and no STO. 

My questions are as follows:

1) Is my order of battle reasonably balanced?  On a tonnage basis I have a 1:1 ratio of screening infantry to armor, and a 4:1 ratio of basic infantry to specialists.  Should those ratios be substantially higher/lower? 

2) Do I need to include the logistics companies within my HQ capacity?  Re: should I reduce my regimental HQ capacity to 20K or add another battalion? 

3) My default logistics support is about 5 GSP reloads for combat units - is that sufficient?

4) should I include a command vehicle in the logistics companies?  If so should I merge them into 4-5K battalions?

5) should I break the artillery into a separate 4K battalion with a HQ unit and have the regimental HQ and constructor unit be its own company? 

6) Do logistics companies need to be designated as "support" or should they be rear echelon?  If so I'd have nothing in the support echelon.  Also should I be holding my logistics companies in orbit and dropping a few every day as they are used or are they relatively safe in the rear?   

6) The terrain type is "Coniferous Forest" (0.03 Oxygen, 47% hydro, temp range is -13 to 17) - is that equivalent to Taiga for a fortification multiplier of 1.25?  If so the actual tonnage should be about 4x the observed tonnage of 2,200t or 9Kt.  Assuming tech parity would landing two regiments for 5x of the actual tonnage give me a reasonable chance of winning?

In case it matters, TN start but I'm still fairly early game (20 years in, 30cm plasmas and composite armor so racial armor 8 and weapon 10)
 

Offline db48x

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2022, 04:03:34 AM »
The only thing you need to fix is that LOG elements are only used if they are in the same formation as the elements that need resupply, or if they are vehicular and are in a parent formation. Elements that need supplies will draw from the topmost parent formation first. You can fix it by clicking the “Display Elements” checkbox in the Order of Battle window and then dragging the LOG elements from your resupply companies into the parent formation. Then just go for it and see how it plays out.
 
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Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2022, 06:59:44 AM »
Your troop composition seems reasonable. Generally my experience with Rakhas is that they have a higher proportion of armor than usual NPRs, and are usually high enough in tech that  it pays to bring high-penetration weapons in any case.

However, I strongly do not recommend using company-sized basic formations. On one hand, you will struggle to produce enough commanding officers to control a sufficiently large force if you insist on such tiny formations. On the other hand, such tiny formations are rather vulnerable to the breakthrough mechanics especially against Rakhas which do love their VEH.

I also recommend building more troops, 25k tons is probably not enough against fortified Rakhas and I would suggest something closer to 200k tons or more.

Also, note that separate logistics companies probably won't work. Ground units can draw resupply in one of two ways: (1) from organic infantry-based LOG/LOG-S elements; (2) from LVH+LOG elements in the same formation or a superior formation only. LVH supply can only proceed down the chain of command, never up. Of course, if you have organic supply units you can use the automatic reinforcement mechanics to keep them topped up, which in vanilla makes INF logistics blatantly superior on a cost and tonnage basis.

How much support is needed? The listed GSP for your units or formations is enough for 10 rounds (80 hours) of combat. Typically I think Rakhas can take about 1-2 weeks to wipe out depending on your force levels, so do the math and plan accordingly.
 
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Offline bankshot (OP)

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2022, 10:57:51 AM »
I use infantry LOG-S for defensive forces, but I had not considered them for assault forces.     I'll look into that - since the replacements could be outside of the combat OOB that would sidestep my question about HQ sizing.  Is there any advantage to using LOG over LOG-S?  The tonnage and costs look to be the same per supply unit, and using LOG-S would let me more closely match the GSP I need per round. 

I'd originally planned on two regiments (50K tons) but based on your advice will delay until I have 200-250K available. 

Should I armor my heavy bombardment units?  It makes them cost twice as much to produce but should make them better able to survive any counter-battery fire. 

If 4K/5Kt units are too small should I be thinking 10Kt or should I go with 20-25K element sizes?  I've got around 100 ground force commanders as I haven't yet dedicated a military academy to them but right now I don't lack commanders.  I can certainly see that as an issue in the future. 

 

Offline Droll

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2022, 11:09:07 AM »
I use infantry LOG-S for defensive forces, but I had not considered them for assault forces.     I'll look into that - since the replacements could be outside of the combat OOB that would sidestep my question about HQ sizing.  Is there any advantage to using LOG over LOG-S?  The tonnage and costs look to be the same per supply unit, and using LOG-S would let me more closely match the GSP I need per round. 

I'd originally planned on two regiments (50K tons) but based on your advice will delay until I have 200-250K available. 

Should I armor my heavy bombardment units?  It makes them cost twice as much to produce but should make them better able to survive any counter-battery fire. 

If 4K/5Kt units are too small should I be thinking 10Kt or should I go with 20-25K element sizes?  I've got around 100 ground force commanders as I haven't yet dedicated a military academy to them but right now I don't lack commanders.  I can certainly see that as an issue in the future.

One thing to be aware of is that unlike in-formation supply, the replacement mechanic fires every production increment. If you're like me, that's one day but by default it's 5 days. This means if you don't want problems your units will still need at least one production increments worth of internal supply to tide them over until reinforced/resupplied.
 
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Offline rainyday

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2022, 03:48:17 PM »
One thing to be aware of is that unlike in-formation supply, the replacement mechanic fires every production increment. If you're like me, that's one day but by default it's 5 days.

I'd be interested to know more about why you change this and what the other pros and cons are.
 

Offline Droll

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2022, 04:17:40 PM »
One thing to be aware of is that unlike in-formation supply, the replacement mechanic fires every production increment. If you're like me, that's one day but by default it's 5 days.

I'd be interested to know more about why you change this and what the other pros and cons are.

I'm assuming your talking about my production increment.

The only disadvantage I can think of is during certain space battles it's more likely you'll get a stutter when you spill over into the next production increment. But that is sort of superficial as aurora isn't an RTS where you make split-second decisions.

As for pros, a small advantage is that you do not "overrun" production tasks nearly as much, instead of wasting potentially 4 days you at most waste 1 day.

The other advantage is the one highlighted already, with 1 day production increments the ground force replacement mechanic will fire every 3 combat rounds instead of every 15 which means you can get away with about a 5th of the logistics units inside your actual combat formations which simplifies HQ design.

The big one though, it it helps massively when you are terraforming small bodies where it's easy to have too much terraforming rate, resulting in you waaay overshooting your pressure targets.

I honestly highly recommend for people to at least try 1 day production increments especially if that last item is frustrating you.

EDIT: I forgot about a big disadvantage that maintenance checks happen per production increment, so fighters without maintenance modules suffer under the 1 day increment.
« Last Edit: September 06, 2022, 07:35:40 PM by Droll »
 
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Offline bankshot (OP)

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2022, 04:43:07 PM »
Thanks for that info - having it fire only once every 15 rounds would cause a real problem if  I didn't take that into consideration.

One other disadvantage would be for fighters with no engineering stations.  I think maintenance failures are checked for during a production increment, so your available deployment time would shrink from 0-5 days to 0-1 day. 
 
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Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Questions about Ground force design vs. Rakhas
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2022, 07:22:28 PM »
I use infantry LOG-S for defensive forces, but I had not considered them for assault forces.     I'll look into that - since the replacements could be outside of the combat OOB that would sidestep my question about HQ sizing.  Is there any advantage to using LOG over LOG-S?  The tonnage and costs look to be the same per supply unit, and using LOG-S would let me more closely match the GSP I need per round. 

LOG-S are strictly superior as you lose 1/5 as many supplies every time one of them is destroyed by enemy fire. There is literally no reason to use the 50-ton LOG module except on LVH.

I always mod my DB so that the 50-ton LOG is LVH-only, and then double its capacity so that LVH+LOG are actually competitive with INF+LOG-S
 
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