Detailed Ground Combat

[Suicide Junkie]

Using the attack/defense modifiers is still not good...

Only *one* unit is needed to get the full bonus, and you can't get penalties, since only the best value is used.


"Mobility" seems like such a tacked-on thing, with no actual mechanic behind it...

The cost method is simple, effective and straightforward, on the other hand.
If the goal is to increase variety, this is the way to do it.

For example:
In Gritecon, your artillery have 50 hitpoints and 300 attack. And they cost thousands to build.
In order to win a ground war, you must add infantry to that (or at most, light tanks). Light infantry give you 50 hitpoints, one attack and cost only 20-30 resources to build.

The infantry can't kill anything on thier own, and the artillery can't survive on their own.

Basically, the bigger the troop;
- more firepower per kt
- far far more expensive per kt
- about equal hitpoints per kt, maybe less.

Thusly, the player wants big troops, but can't afford the time and resources to make their army *all* big troops. In practice, you get ten or twenty apocalypse tanks, maybe two hundred light tanks, and ten thousand infantry.

The infantry die really fast, but get built fast and often... 100 per turn even on small colonies.
The apocalypse tanks are built one per turn on industrialized worlds, but win battles, and survive thanks to the infantry absorbing the hits.
And then there are the intermediate sized tanks to round things off.

Do you really need more variety than that?

[Tampa_Gamer]

leo1434 said:
I always wented to drop my troops on a planet and then start a land/air (and sea?) battle... "Panzer General"

Same here - I still have Star General on my hard drive for that very reason. Moo3 was awful, but I did like their ground combat unit system and the modular approach to forming units. I have taken that similar approach to a mod I have been working on during the beta. My mod approaches ground combat from the opposite end of what SJ describes. In my mod, the ground units are expensive (on the scale of ships). When you form/build a ground unit (division/corps/army), you are basically building a TOE for that unit made up of brigades which will provide various attributes formerly provided by components. So instead of having possibly hundreds of units to control in ground combat (near impossible), you may have 5-10 units which may be army-heavy divisions or perhaps cheaper and all-infantry, etc. I think this also makes it easier from a micro-management standpoint as you can simply order 4-5 divisions/corps/army to a planet. At the end of combat, you may have several formation down to 10-20% and you must wait for them to repair/replenish before continuing your campaign. I cannot say too much more right now as some of the things I do in the mod depend upon whether features will be kept/stricken/added before se5 is finalized. Bottom-line, now that ground combat is tactically represented (again, assuming that stays in) you can bet there will be many different mods building on this feature.

[PvK]

There are actually three different places to put combat modifiers, with different results, and they are all used in Proportions mod, though it may not widely be known or understood. I added some descriptions in Proportions 3.0.5 to help explain, although some of them require some raciat traits to see (Elite Military, or Religious).

Placed on Vehicle type, the modifiers stack for EACH unit, and I beleive negative modifiers stack for each unit as well. Ten units means ten times the modifier, applied to the whole army.

Placed on a component as an ability, the highest value is used for the whole army, like Combat Sensors and ECM in the unmodded game. These don't stack... but they might if they were different types with different Family values - I haven't tested that.

Placed on a weapon as a weapon to-hit modifier, I believe they affect the firepower coming out of that weapon only, not out of the whole army.

Combined with the realization that damage is not applied simply left-to-right, I think this leaves more room than SJ suggests for diversity in ground combat units. Though basically ya, we're not given much to work with in SE4.

In Proportions I have:

Infantry - fairly cheap, has lots of damage resistance, not so good firepower, and good combat modifiers representing many small targets, ability to take cover, tactical flexibility, etc., but inability to mount large weapons. Has bonuses that can't be got from vehicles, so it helps to use both infantry and vehicles. Uses the required components to force them and only them to use the infantry components. Costs more orgs than other unit types - in Proportions 2.x they's fast to produce, but in Proportions 3.x the high org cost means they can only be built in good numbers on planets or at orbital construction bases.

Vehicles - have enough size to add large weapons and shields. Tend to have more firepower than infantry, and if shields are invested in, more damage resistance, but shields are expensive in rad cost which makes them a bit slow to build.

Artillery - Some higher techs allow troop weapons which have a lot of firepower but are large and don't give much damage resistance. Lots of bang but should be mixed with tougher troops for protection.

Elite Infantry (and in Proportions 3.x, armor) - Have a +1 offensive bonus per unit... so +100 elite infantry means +100 for the whole army to hit with, which can give empires with a weak ground combat aptitude a chance to do all right in ground combat if they invest enough. But elite units have a very high cost (in Proporitons 3.x, a high org cost).

Zealot infantry (Proportions 3.x, for religious empires) is rather cheaper to produce (they're volunteering for immediate action), but involves a stacking negative defense modifier on the vehicle type, which I believe results in a cumulative defensive modifier for the whole army while they survive. Represent fearless, wreckless volunteer fanatics.

PvK

[Captain Kwok]

Component 'To Hit...' modifiers stack with different family numbers.

I don't see much harm in having small bonuses (i.e. 1-2%) on troops.

[leo1434]

Tampa: "Star General"... I thought I was the only one on Earth who played a SG game from time to time.

A good example of a wonderful idea, wasted by a rushed release. I can only dream about what a great game would it had been. Is the only one I know where you can have space combat and besides a detailed surface combat, I hope SE5 will change this!

Returning to the "to hit" modificators, I was thinking I don't like very much to add up every unit modificators... but I think I will use those modificators in components instead that in Vehicles Types. I find useful that you can control the possibilty of being stacked (different families) or not (if the modifiers are originated by the same familiy component).

So my idea is to leave all hull sizes without "to hit" modifiers and to add a Troop or Crew (in case of bigger vehicles)component with crew quarters attribute and then activate the crew quarter requirement for the troop type hull sizes, combined with the "one per vehicle" limitation and the desired "to hit" value.

For example in an infantry VehicleSize (2 kt) you can add a "regular troop" (normal infantry) "veteran troop" (better quality troops, small bonus), or "elite troop" (the best, possibly for "military elitist" races only). This component will combine the ship bridge and crew querters attribute, the other 1 kT will be used for armament, some sort of flak vest or even protective armor suit will have 0 kt and be limited to "one per vehicle" also. Bigger vehicles will be projected using a cockpit (ship bridge), a crew (multi-place) component (which will take proportionally more space, for a two beings crew or higher number crew). By using scale mounts each type of component will be available for the right vehicle size only.

By the way, speaking about mounts, anyone tried to use a mount which have "tonnage percent" value of 0 (zero)? Will it result in a divide por zero error, or on the other hand will convert an unmmounted comp of, say, 100 kT in a 0 kt one? This will be useful for limiting the 0 kT protection components to infantry sizes units only.

[Fyron]

I do not think family matters for troop components...

[leo1434]

But... do you agree with PvK when he says that modifiers work different if put in VehicleSize (all are added up), that if they are put as an component ability (only the best used)?

[Suicide Junkie]

Kt Size has no problem being zero.
Except for the fact that it may allow designs with an infinite number of components. (Use the X-per-Vehicle restriction, or a high cost to dissuade players from adding too many)

Hitpoints being zero is a problem, but only if the whole unit can be designed so as to have zero hitpoints total. Be sure that at least one of your required components has a hitpoint.

[leo1434]

Yes I'm well aware of the use of the "X-per-vehicle" limitation.
But, more in detail, I want to know if someone tried to make a comp with some Tonnage value (more than 0 kT) and then use a mount on it with Tonnage percent = 0... will it result in a mounted component of 0 Kt tonnage? I will not atempt to make any 0 hitpoints (structure) component. Thanks a lot for the tip SJ!

[Suicide Junkie]

The mount's tonnage percent is a multiplier.
There is no division involved, so zero is not an issue

Making it a negative size is probably not a good idea, but might also open up a whole new branch of modding. In which case it would be a very good idea.