Doctrine entirely based on 'ground' forces - is it possible?

[maeby (OP)]

I thought about playing a campaign where I only use my soldiers and their equipment as weapons.  This means a boarding focused approach to space superiority and rushing NPR worlds with heavily armored and/or fast dropships.  I reckon it won't be possible without any point defense, so I think I will allow myself to tech into Gauss cannons or railguns for that purpose only.  I have a few questions about planetary battles though:

1.  What happens to an NPR if I capture all their worlds? As far as I know they don't need fuel, so will their fleets be around forever?

2.  Is it possible to drop STO's onto a planet and use them against the fleets in orbit while fighting a surface battle for the planet at the same time?

3.  Does fortification also apply while attacking a planet? Ie should I bring construction units with me to dig in on a planet after I landed there?

3.  There are a lot of noob friendly guides for ground forces around but I need something like an in depth guide :D I have so far only ever used mass infantry with maybe a few tanks here and there but if I focus my whole campaign around it I would want to know more.  Where can I find more detailed information on the pros and cons of different unit compositions etc. ? Most AAR's and youtube videos I watched have incredibly intricate setups for their ground forces but I don't know if that is because of roleplay reasons or mechanical ones.

On the topic of boarding as primary weapon: I read in a couple of posts here and on reddit that the problem with this strategy is that all your marines die after successfully boarding a ship because the enemies will blow it up immediately.

4.  Is it possible to somehow evacuate or rescue marines that are on a ship that is about to be blown up after they took control of it? How does the escape pod mechanic work?

5.  Would a possible answer to this problem be to use microwave or meson fighters to disable the enemy fleet while it is being boarded? I know this breaks with my original idea but if my marines get blown up everytime they win, it is kind of hard to stomach RP wise.

Does anyone have experience with that kind of playstyle?

Thanks!

[nuclearslurpee]

• There is no mechanism which "eliminates" a race from the game, other than manual deletion, so as long as an NPR has any ships, mining colonies, etc. they will still remain in existence technically.
• Possible, yes, but your STOs will probably be wiped out by enemy ground forces. However since ground combat happens in 8-hour increments you can probably win the orbital space battle first.
• Kind of. It can sometimes help if the battle is very long, particularly rear-areas units which are not in the offensive stance, but it's questionable whether it is worth the tonnage which could be used to bring more tanks, artillery, etc. instead.
• In general, especially against NPRs, there is really not a lot of depth in the system on the tactical level. INF+PW, INF+CAP, or VEH+2xCAP are almost strictly optimal due to the mass reliance of NPRs on light infantry units, supply + HQ as needed, and if you use artillery LB is sufficient to minimize collateral damage while still breaking infantry. Some anti-tank may be good to bring in a second wave once most of the infantry are killed, but mostly you just need CAP. However, most players prefer to roleplay and any more complex hierarchy is assuredly roleplay.
• Not to my knowledge. The Abandon Ship button will place the crew into lifepods, but will not evacuate any ground troops on board (if it does, they will simply be mixed into the lifepods as crew members anyways).
• Microwaves would help, mesons probably would not be much use.

[Garfunkel]

It's practically impossible and even in theory, just extremely difficult and annoying to do.

1. Once you take over a colony, there's a chance that any ships in that system will surrender There is no "total surrender" mechanic as nuclearslurpee said.
2. Yes. One way to make this more feasible and not lose your STO's is to use a moon if the planet has one.
3. Not really useful because it takes so long to entrench to higher levels - odds are that the formation gets wiped out before it gets entrenched.
4. UHV and SHV can easily dominate the battlefield because of their thick armour and amount of HP but of course they are really expensive and take quite a bit of tonnage. UHV with 4 CAP will definitely sweep the battlefield clear. The other extreme would be INF+PWL as it's so cheap and takes so little space that you can bring millions of them easily, though of course casualties would be horrendous. As nuclearslurpee said, there's no in-depth trick book required for fighting the NPRs or the spoilers.
5. Not possible as the enemy will instantly attack the ship as they lose control, there's no time to load troops back into assault shuttles.
6. To have any chance of success, you would need microwaves.

If you do want to do it, I recommend not playing as humans but as a Hivemind Bug race from Sirius. That way you can use bug-fighters with microwaves that blind the enemy ships, then board them with your clicker-clacker warriors - who cares if they are lost, it's just biomass that you'll regain back soon enough, and finally you can overwhelm NPRs with ten million tons of INF+PWL roleplaying as a teething mass of ravenous bugs about to devour a planet.

[nuclearslurpee]

The other extreme would be INF+PWL as it's so cheap and takes so little space that you can bring millions of them easily, though of course casualties would be horrendous.

Given "balanced tech", i.e. equal racial attack and armour compared to an opponent, INF+PWL by themselves are actually quite bad for anything other than boarding combat (but usually very good at this one thing). Compared to INF+PW, they will have about 42% of the kill rate (25% on a per-unit basis, but +67% more units for the tonnage) and 60% of the loss rate (3 tons lost per death vs 5 tons for INF+PW). This is not a good ratio and they will quickly fall behind against INF+PW, INF+CAP, to say nothing of the extreme armored units you can build. Note that since ground force costs are on a per-ton basis (multiplied by armor and capabilities where applicable), INF+PWL are not cheaper than INF+PW per ton, only per unit which is not a very meaningful measure.

INF+PWL is most effective when you want to delay the enemy as long as possible, either as a cheap meatshield for your real killers (UHV+4xCAP) or to screen your artillery. It is pretty debatable whether either use case is more effective than plain CAP spam, probably not against the NPRs but against a player race or possibly some spoilers there may be benefits to such an alternative approach.

It is worth pointing out, by the way, that in ground combat the effect of formation composition is relatively minor as long as you are sensible about it - against NPRs this means lots of infantry and/or multi-shot weapons (CAP, LB, LAC, and so on) as your main components. Usually the relative tonnages involved in combat (you need 3x to 5x advantage to invade most planets, at a minimum, and more is better to reduce overall losses) and technology which scales to the fourth power in theory and somewhat less in practice but still following a rough, superlinear power law behavior. This is one way INF+PWL can be actually more effective than usually expected, if you put a lot of RP into plasma carronades to boost their attack beyond 2x the enemy racial armour tech you can achieve actually better effective kill rates than INF+PW/CAP. Personally I consider abusing plasma tech against NPRs to be rather gamey but each to their own I suppose.

[maeby (OP)]

This is one way INF+PWL can be actually more effective than usually expected, if you put a lot of RP into plasma carronades to boost their attack beyond 2x the enemy racial armour tech you can achieve actually better effective kill rates than INF+PW/CAP.  Personally I consider abusing plasma tech against NPRs to be rather gamey but each to their own I suppose.

I must have missed something here.  How does researching plasma carronades improve infantry? I must be blind, does it say that anywhere in game? Are there more techs from other areas that improve ground units?

Thanks for your answer!

[kyonkundenwa]

I must have missed something here.  How does researching plasma carronades improve infantry? I must be blind, does it say that anywhere in game? Are there more techs from other areas that improve ground units?

Ground force racial damage is based on your highest energy weapon [caliber] tech. Plasma is the cheapest energy weapon research so it's the go-to for increasing ground force capability without wasting lab time.
Armor tech increases ground force racial armor.

[misanthropope]

... for certain values of 'entirely'

railguns are a better choice.  if you build plasma you will need a second beam weapon for point defense, and the oft-cited benefit of plasma don't match the cost of halving your available RPs. 

moreover, you have to have a focus on speed to get your boarding parties into play anyhow, that offsets the turret advantage that gauss have in favor of rails.

because of the way ground weapons are calibrated, it is highly important to have your beams at parity (with enemy armor, not enemy beams), but there is little advantage to tech superiority.  a superiority in *armor* is extremely valuable, as your overall most cost-effective unit (CAP infy) will make a huge leap in resilience against the bulk of enemy weaponry. and your heavy tanks turn into jason frigging vorhees.

[Person012345]

I wouldn't say treating your marines as expendable is really a problem RP wise, in fact I imagine with a strat like this it would basically be mandatory. Obviously it doesn't work if you're playing a moralistic UFOP kind of empire, but if your marines are composed of imperial guardsmen...

It would even seem perfect for RPing as a hive-mind style swarm.

[Platys51]

I did a no weapon challenge run some time back and enjoyed it. And indeed, its perfect for swarm type games. I don't use shipborne weapons anymore for those at all. But you'll find out micro is on high side with a LOT of unit loading, especially if you use fighter swarms. And if you do, you want fast, large and heavily armored ship to draw fire with them or losses on approach and disengage are massive. Also, you want crew combat to take as few turns as possible, because enemies will fire on now your ships without any of your fleet close by to draw fire.

Anyway, its possible and fun even, try it out. Makes you approach some stuff in fun new angles.