New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I have this idea.

What I propose is a simple system for Troops. Right now we like to break them down into sub-catagories, Light Infantry, Medium Infantry, and Heavy Infantry. Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor. Light Air Support, Medium Air Support, and Heavy Air Support.

Currently to design an Troop, in an unmodded game, one must select either small, medium, or large troop. Then manually add all the weapons and other components manually to creat ONE single unit type.

Mods however break the Troops into the above mentioned unit groups so that a player can have a semblence of true Infantry, Armor, and Air units.

What I propose is kids simple, based upon the model used in Rise Of Nations. Instead of designing a single infantry unit, you would design an Infantry Group. These groups would be unit sizes such as Squad, platoon, regiment, division, and say corp/army.

For the Infantry Group "squad" the playe would simply choose between many differant single infantry components. These components would not be weapons as they are now, but rather single troop images that have specific weapons abiities. The Riflemen Component would be a basic short range less damage component, the Heavy Machine Gunner would be more powerful, the missile/anti trooper would be another one. A communication specialist (multi tracking, ecm, etc), an engineer (a shield / armor ability, etc) and so on.

A player would simply choose their Groupings, which would be a specific KT size, and add the infantry components as desired. For say a Squad size Group or Unit, the KT size would be 12. The play could had 6 riflemen components at 2kt each, or mix an match them. 4 rifelmen and 2 bazooka men. The larger the Infantry Group, Platoon for instance, the more types and number of infantry components can be added.

In combat they would be shown as a single unit or as a group of say three (Kinda like Combat Group). Each individual group, be it a squad or platoon, or greater, would have its one distinct look. This way you know at a glace that you have a six 12 kt squads and 1 200kt regiment deployed.

The same thing can be done for mechinzed or armored vehicles, and air units.

As to fighters the concept would be about the same except that instead of squads it would be air unit types like wings, air wings, and such.

In Empires At War each X-wing Group has 12 x-wings. In this case to serve our purposes, an Wing Group could consist of 12 seperate fighter components. Attack Fighter Components, Defense Fighter Components, Support fighter components, and tactical fighter components, coupled with support craft to make up one wing group.

Plants would be defeneded by 1 group which could = 12 fighters (By current standards that would be one fighter with 12 guns.) By mixing and matching these wing groups, a player could add say 6 fighter components, 2 bomber components (They would basically be anti ship missiles) and 1 support craft that offers shielding, To Hit, and other bonuses.

I am working a model of this system for use in an SE IV mod that have been working on, but think that it would also work well for SE V.

Instead of individual fighter images in combat, the traditional fighter image would be replaced by say a small group of 3 fighters. Larger groupings would have more fighters or other distingishing markers to denote large groups of fighters within a single unit.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

On the Galactic level surely it would be corps,army sized units at the least.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Yes, and you would have dozens and dozens of armies spread over hundres of worlds. A simple way to get mass scaling without the bugginess of designing and constructing one troop at a time.

Instead of one unit, you would be designing one entire army or smaller depending upon your needs.

It would also aid in combat because there would be fewer objects to render assuming that an army sized unit would be several hundred or even thousands of kt in size and take a truly long time to build/construct. Thus a player wouldn't have dozens on each planet because of size limits and resource restrictions. Make them cost a lot of organics to maintain and you have a good working model for a simulated army as opposed to a single troop.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I like the idea for the ground troops. Where you have small medium and large troops you could have Regiments, Divisions, Corps and Armies. Rather then having to build hundreds of small troops you just build several armies and then invade a world that only has a few divisions to oppose you. I think this would make more sense. Not to mention it would also allow you to simulate more accurate mixed arms. Not sure about fighters though. It does make more sense to have 12 fighters in a group rather then 1 fighter with 12 guns, but would this effect space combat? 1 fighter on screen represents 12 fighters? Your light carrier launches 120 fighter 120 * 12 = 1440 That might just be a little much. And I think the 120 is even a low. Last time I played I thought I was able to get 200 on my first light carrier.

Edit: Now that I think about it though, 12 fighters could be in the Heavy fighter, you could start the light with like 4. That would make that more realistic.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

But does SE5 allow appropriate losses and costs from losses to larger units?

Example: If a unit represents a unit of 10,000 men and 1,000 vehicles, and it gets 30% damaged in combat... well that would mean on average 3,000 casualties and 300 vehicles knocked out. If that's one unit in SE5, doesn't it just magically repair at the repair rate of the sector, for zero cost? Seems like a flawed model for representing casualties and replacement costs.

But, at least it would solve the utterly horrible UI in SE5 for having to deal with many units... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

PvK

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I think At means the scale would be shifted in accordance with the unit shift. So for fighters 1 unit on the screen might represent 12 fighters but the amount of space they take and the launch capability would be scaled up to count as 12 fighters too; instead of just the one you see on the screen. You follow what I mean?

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

PES - That is exactly correct.

And the nice thing as PVK mentioned, would be that instead of loading hundreds of invidual troops units onto a transport, which with the current UI is teadous at best, the transfer would be only a few clicks.

And the cargo capacity of any planet or ship would govern the size of the Army's, Squads, Platoons, etc that a player could have present.

As to the damage, that is a good question, but I think that components would be damamged much like they are now, thus reducing the overall effectiveness of the unit.

For example a Platoon Group (A single unit) with say 60 riflemen, 20 mortor men, 2 engineers, and 1 commanding officer components, go into battle and suffor damage, the overall battle efftiveness of the group would be determined by the amount of components, in this case rifelmen and such, that were damage.

Now scale that up, you drop an Army of 2000 onto a planet with its own defense army of 2000 and the battle it out one on one. In the end the best overall designed army would win, but suffor significant damage. The damage would represnt the attrition rate. So if they lost 800 troop components the combat effectiveness would be reduced but the army would still be a signifcant combat force.

The repairing of the Army Group is repaired, assuming it can be, would represent the rebuilding of that armys capablity.

Again the same thing can be done with fighters.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

As I understand in SE5 the units are damaged until repaired. I have not tested this, it is drawn from speculation. If however the repairs of units are handled the same as they were in SE4 than the problem with your plan would be the instant repair of any surviving unit. So lets take your 2,000 unit army for example. I invade your planet and you win but I damage your army by 1,999 points. Your army should have 1 point left when I drop another army with my next turn (for the sake of argument lets say they just reached the planet). If unit damage is handled the same as in SE4 your 2,000 point army will be back to 2,000 points. That is what PvK was saying. The model would be flawed because regardless of damage done everything is magically wiped away at the end of the turn. You see what PvK is saying? A 2,000 unit army will be repaired the same as a 20 unit army as a 2 billion unit army. It just doesn't matter what you do in damage so long as you live.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I've already considered this for my SFB mod...or any other mod I might make...It just seems easier...

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Repair capabilities in SEV are measured by tonnage repaired per turn so all you would have to do is scale down the amounts for unit repair.

If I'm understanding this concept correctly each unit would represent a larger group and the components you put on the unit would represent individual troopers or vehicles. That would be cool as long as you remember to also scale up the costs so that you couldn't build an entire "army" in a single turn.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Actually that's not what I was saying. In SE4 it would suck for that reason too. I assume SE5 is better and tracks damage to each component, so as Atro says, you could have one 2000 kT unit with 2000 1-kT components (or maybe 20 100-kT components, or whatever) that would degrade with damage and could be made to only repair kind of slowly so damage would mean something.

Which would be kind of cool and solve the micro-management nightmare...

But, I think there would still be another issue with the damage, in that I assume there is no way to mod in a resource cost to repair damaged components (except for the maintenace cost of damaged components as you wait for them to repair). So the problem is that large-sized units would regenerate with no real cost in resources.

Two examples of where this would not make sense:

You attack with ten Divisions, and they all take about 80% damage. It only costs you time to repair them all up to full. Then in a second battle 8 of your ten Divisions are destroyed, and two unhurt. You have to reconstruct those divisions at major cost, and no repair time is involved. The same damage was inflicted, but for arbitrary reasons, the repair cost and time can be either huge or small. Some units representing major forces of thousands of men and their equipment could be practically wiped out and yet recover to full strength for no cost at all.

Even worse would be if you do this for fighters, which I assume in general would tend to be destroyed in combat. Some squadrons could be almost wiped out in combat, and then restored fully for free, even though the losses should represent nearly all of the fighters being blown to shreds.

PvK

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I was under the impression this wasn't working yet. As I said I haven't tested it yet so this is speculation on my behalf. If it is working than great. PvK you have a great point and now I see where you are coming from with your thought. Another possible problem that I have yet to test. How is unit grade effected? Does SE5 subtract from unit grade. Say if the unit is wiped out by 80% then rebuilt? You could potentially have an ultra elite (the highest rating in my SFTC, I don't know what the ratings are in stock) grade army knocked down by 90%, repair them, and poof they are elite again. I know from commanding troops when you get even 1 new person it disrupts the system and takes time to integrate them.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Ah..., now I see what you're saying, PVK, and you are quite right.

But, if we shift our thinking a little bit, the initial cost of a unit could also be considered laying out the unit's support network, personnel, supplies, replacement parts, and actual replacements. Maintenance costs (which would be scaled up too) maintain that network.

Sure it is unrealistic to think that an army that has been almost completely wiped out would bring enough stuff with it to replace all losses but if the repairs per turn numbers are low enough it would encourage a player to scrap the unit and build a new one, especially if he needs the cargo space for an effective combat unit.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

This is how they do it Star Wars Empires At War and in Rise Of Nations.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I think for troops it would work, and be a great idea, I hate building one unit at a time, it just seems so unrealistic (And today congress authorized 50 more soliders to be trained and 10 tanks built!! wooohoo universal domination here we come) but I'm still not sold on the fighters yet. I can see the repair of the troops working the way Shinigami says but for fighters I don't know how you could do that. I suppose you can give them a extremly high repair time to simulate the time it would take to get new fighters and pilots into the squadron, but the fact that these fighters and pilots aren't costing any resources to train/build seems a little unrealistic on this front. Even boosting maint. and const. costs.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

You could boost the maintenance cost on fighters but repair time for units is generic. If it takes 2 turns to replace (repair) 10 tanks it will take 2 turns to replace (repair) 10 fighters. And as I said below, I don't like the thought of a brigade or corps or whatever taking 80% losses, repairing/replacing those losses and coming out with a higher experience rating than before the fight. That is flat out impossible!

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I have a silly question, since when do anything other than ships and fleets get experience? Have I missed a memo? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Units don't get experience? I guess I better stop moding and start playing. Oh wait; can't do that the darn thing is so broken it can't be played! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Seriously if units don't get experience than why the heck not? That is just nuts! Is it really that impossible (from a coding perspective) to keep track of experience for units if you can already keep track of experience for every other vehicle? I think it's time for yet another email.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Some things to consider:

A) Set repair to zero. If you're low on space, scrap the ruined units and rebuild, or send them off to die. This avoids any whining http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif about repair costing less

B) Have low repair. Give units zero maintenance. Give each component a negative resource generation ability. (Now maintenance is proportional to the number of operational units, not the number of designed units)
To extend on this, you could make units free to build (or maybe 1 organics). How many troops you can support is another matter entirely.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I thought about the zero repair option but didn't think it would be possible. I thought if you took out repair for ground units and fighters you would lose it for ships as well and thats just stupid to not be able to repair ships.

As for the Exp. thing, basically what your saying is the units should get higher exp when NOT fighting because if they even get one casuality they would have to deal with the rookie and he would bring them all down? I agree if the corps losses like 80-90% then yeah, that might just be a little much, but you also have to figure that the 10-20% who survive are the best of the best and will train the replacements the same way they were trained so hopefully said rookies will have a higher degree of training then a regular rook fresh out of basic. That is what wisdom and exp is for after all....to be passed onto others.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

You are talking SE5, right?

Ship, unit and facility repair rates are all completely independent.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Ahhh, I was, I did not know that. It wasn't that way in SEIV was it?

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Units and facilities couldn't even take damage in SEIV. They were either alive or dead.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Those are lite mass-market games which I am not interested in playing because they don't make enough sense to hold my attention, exactly because of game design decisions like that (and worse).

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Yeah, Atrocities... are you arguing for or against this?

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I wouldn't say that I am arguing for it, but it does have its advantages. Right now in SE V it is a real PITA to deal with troops and with all the great minds here I figured that the concept proposed would be workable and a welcome alternative to the current status quo. You guys are the ones who can make such a system work because you all know the inner workings far better than I do.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I don't see troops being much of a problem, at least relative to other SE5 UI stuff.

Building them isn't bad... Shift clicking the count up to 50, or typing in a number gives you lots of troops.

Trying to manually mix/load/drop damaged units would be a pain, but when you have a hundred, two or three damaged guys is pretty insignificant.

Combat is strategic anyways, so the AI can do the swarming and shooting...

What particular troubles were you thinking of?

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

It is not a particular trouble, it is just a concept for doing things differantly.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I don't see a solution that addresses all of the issues - at best there are ways to trade some issues for other issues.

For example, while SJ's clever idea to remove or reduce the repair ability for units prevents unrealistic free repairs, it adds the problem of units which only represent the few survivors of a squadron or division, but which still take up just as much space, creating a new micromanagement problem and one which the AI is unlikely to ever figure out without heavy micromanagement scripting, if it's even possible).

It seems like another case where Malfador added many new features with interesting possibilities in SE5 but the UI and AI haven't yet caught up.

The macro-unit idea is a good one but I don't see that it solves the problem without adding new ones. I think Malfador really needs to address the issues the new features created in the UI at least. In this case, adding the ability to group units and then to select some in and out by criteria such as damage level and design, and adding better automatic functions for controlling their resupply, etc.

PvK

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I suggested this concept more for use with a mod, not a solution to problems with SE V. It seemed like a cool way to do troops.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

It is a cool idea. I just wish it were a complete fix, or that something would be a complete fix.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

If troop combat is anything like space combat, you won't have many wounded. It will be lots all dead, lots unharmed, and one or two damaged.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Unless the troops are wearing some form of VacSuit or EVA suit I think they will all be dead! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Units are attrition resources/assets. While they may survive combat, how many will survive more than 2 or 3? Its like expending ammo that you may or may not use, or gain back...

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Just thought of another minor issue, let's say you've created an all infantry unit, 50 soldier components. Now you have a unit with 50 weapons. Multiple units makes for hundreds of weapons being fired. Won't that tend to bog down the game engine, especially on an older system?

I really like this idea but it seems that a modder who uses it will be pulling his hair out trying to balance all the issues.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I see what you are saying, and looking at it that way (the whole picture that is) it makes sense. I think what I was doing was focusing in on the element of At's suggestion. You see what I mean, it isn't just one tank/soldier, although it may appear as 1 unit on the design, queue, and cargo screens. It is really hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands. In that sense I couldn't understand why experience would not be a factor. I just needed to pull back a minute and take into consideration this would only be one mod, maybe two. Like the SFTC; this wouldn't work since it would void the way PCF are handled. Fighters... but that is there and we are here with At's idea/question.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

How is one mega unit firing hundreds of weapons going to bog down a system any more than what we have now? Hundreds of individual units firing one weapon each; its still hundreds of shots. With At's mega units you would have the same number of weapons but less individual pieces to move around the screen. We need someone more into the graphical side but I would think it would help combat. Same number of shots but less pieces to move around.

Edited: Speaking of the balance how much is there to balance? The cargo capacities of planets are standard so the individual size hulls could be fractions of them. The movement could be set by size, larger armies move slower. The number of weapon slots could be based on the size of the units once again in fractions there of. Would that work? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

PES, good point about bogging a system down, I was still thinking about hundreds of units... oops!

As for balance, a modder would have to work out what scale he wants for his mod. Is an army 50kt or 100kt or some other number? How many armies does he want a ship to be able to carry? Why can a ship that carries x number of armies carry millions of people (pop) but only one weapons platform?

Those are just some off-the-wall examples, of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Working out the cargo equivalences and the amount of damage different types of units can do to each other could be a bit of a headache but it can certainly be done.

That's all I meant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Good point, once again I was only looking at the armies not the larger picture. I have this habit of wanting to fix the parts of the problem instead of addressing the whole problem in one shot.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

On a side note, I'm sure with some more arm twisting, we get Aaron to condense like units in planet cargo as it has already been done with units for cargo transfer.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Well as you know SF PCF's are probably whole divisions or armies of troops. And the fighters are usually grouped by squadron, even though they are tracked seperatly based on their storage/launch bays. There is no reason why you couldn't make an individual fighter model represent a squadron of fighters, and instead of adding weapons you just add the figher to the squadron, when it takes damage, you destroy a fighter, and its removed from the squadron.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Good point, and I am willing to bet that it is on his list of things to do. To bad we cannot combine troops like we can fleets.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

That is a good idea for the PCF, and as you point out pretty much the way it is now. In the case of the fighters it wouldn't work. I would have to create every variable of every design that can be made. Simple with prototype fighters but much more complex with the 6th Generation Fighter. Then there are issues with speed mixes. Besides the only reason SF works them as squadrons is for the ripple weapons effect which can't be done in SE5 and for the ease of playing when the hex map is littered with counters. Which SE5 handles for us. I can't see a real advantage when it comes to applying this to the SFTC. All I am saying is that this has massive potential for a mod. The hull ideas I have touched on from At's prior suggestion along with this to make ground combat more challenging but less graphics intense. Add to those two ideas facilities along the lines of SJ's; but using a more streamlined approach, so that planets become far more valuable. Decrease reproduction and migration; which is something I am already testing in the SFTC. By slowing them both down the populations have become far more valuable and I have found a reason not to sterilize planets. My populations just can't reproduce fast enough to fill those loses, it is honestly more advantageous for me to conquer. Also I have implemented longer build times for facilities and slowed ship build times for planet side industry. It takes longer to build up a colony and if I find an enemies I have a reason to take it intact. In stock I just don't get that feeling since I can raise a planet to the ground and rebuild/repopulate it much to quickly!

I'm rambling. Point is I am starting to see elements of a mod that would make planets, populations, ships, and troops more valuable. Not just another build and conquer, more like a space epic!

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

On the population front, I wish there was a more quanitative tracking of population vs crew. Crew I guess is abstractly represented by the Organics resource, but I would much rather have crew as a fourth resource. Crew could the represent the amount of adult aged, trained personel available for either ship crews, or for ground combat armies...Small populations will be limited in the number of armies, and ships they can field because of the lack of trained individuals. Also if we can track the crew amounts and their experience, then we should be able to have special 'individuals/heroes' that could add their special talents to a ship or army.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

I would have to give that thought; however, just off the top of my head. The SFTC is only using 2 of the three resources. Minerals which I will probably rename to MC (Mega Credits). Then Organics which I made focused more on colony demand but also used in scarce amounts for ships/bases and in larger amounts for troops. I won't rename that one but if I were to I would rename it FS (Food Stuffs). That leaves a third element unused. I could make that into CP (Crew Points or Crew Personnel). Then I could charge based on that. Unfortunately I do not know of a way to keep the cost of an item down (i.e. you only pay a few hundred crew points) to build something then inflate the maintenance cost of that item. I may not need to inflate it. It could be argued that the high initial cost isn't just crew but workers and support personnel who are building the item/ship/base/whatever. Another problem is the maintenance can be explained away as crew rotation and/or new members replacing those that had to leave the service and/or wanted to separate. However, there is no way to control the originating source. See what I mean? A Spaceport ships all production and I have never heard of a way to limit that. So your restriction based on planet population wouldn't work. More experienced crews could be simulated by Military Academies which raise the experience of the ship. Then you wouldn't need to worry about tracking crew experience. Also the AST allowed you to build captains. That could be brought back and implemented the same way I did my XO Weapons. They are 0 HS items with 1HS damage absorption. Then you could give the captains bonuses as in AST and call that experience. You could also take that one step further and make whole bridge crews. It would be simple to limit a ship to just 1 Science Officer. You could also make a science hull size ship that can handle 2 science officers instead of 1. That would add another dimension to the value of hulls because you could make whole components that will only work on a science hull. Now add another component called a Command Center and make it so that you have to have an Admiral with the Command Center. Make the Command Center big and poof; you have an admiral in charge of your ships/fleet! Oh dinners ready...

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

The Science Hull was just one example of the hulls you could make. Also SJ did implement a crew requirement of sorts. However, that is not the same as you or I are talking about here. Eat now talk later...

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

While an interesting idea, it does have 2 downsides not mentioned so far:

• No Partial Construction - if a build order for 100 ground units reaches 50% completion when the planet is attacked, the defender has 50 units to play with. If one "100-strength" superunit is 50% complete, the defender gets nothing.
• Scale on map - scaled-up units won't require proportionately more space on the tactical map making very large (100+) scale combats less realistic. This could also result in tactical exploits like using large numbers of single-units to tie up opposing troops while having one super-unit tackle them piecemeal.

Adding the option to manage ground units in "fleets" would seem a better option for simplifying control but perhaps a better way is to implement auto-stacking where similar units are grouped together once they exceed a certain threshold (e.g. more than 20 units results in each model representing 2 units, more than 50 makes it 5, etc - such stacks having the number of units displayed alongside). This is how large numbers of units are handled in Imperium Galactica II and it keeps numbers down without imposing too many other compromises.

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

The no partial construction is not a problem and not anything new. To me that would affect my decision to build the 2000 man army or the smaller quicker 200 man army. Either way I just can't see it as a problem that you don't already face now. Do I build the 1550kT Baseship or the 350kT Destroyer? Maybe that's not the best of examples but do you see my point? Don't build the large powerful 2000man unit if you know you are about to get invaded.

The scale on map can be manipulated by changing the picture called on or in the vehicle size file. If I am not mistaking it should be this line: "Maximum Model Size".

You are right that one person could use many smaller units to try to tie up a larger unit. What you are forgetting about though is that the smaller units (by the way there wouldn't be any single units) have less weapons and armor. So 20 smaller units each with 10 weapons equals 200 shots at a single large unit with 2000 weapons. Your small units will get chewed up pretty quick. You will need to invade with something that has a bit more endurance and fire power! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif Keep in mind in SE5 the program decides; based on the strategy, how many weapons to fire at each attacking unit. Put another way I may need to fire 20 shots to knock out one of your small units. 20 shots times 20 (from the above example) is 400 shots. If I have 2000 shots (again from the above example) that leaves 1600 shots. Still think you can tie my unit down?

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Well, there is the AI to consider as well...Interesting - but will that affect a unit's ability to navigate around buildings and other obstacles? That should be the main disadvantage for really large units.I was thinking about a more extreme case - say you have player A with 1,000 units total split into 10 stacks of 100 each. Player B has 1,000 units arranged as one 800-unit stack and 200 1-unit stacks. Simply by swarming A with the single units, B can ensure that his 800-unit stack gets to tackle each of A's stacks in turn. Attrition will be high for the single units, but much of A's firepower will be wasted on overkill.

Having large stacks supplied with lots of small weapons will mitigate this but the weapon graphics overheads would presumably then be a problem.

Having the stack sizes set automatically would prevent this but for a mod, one workaround could be to give large stacks a "virtual weapon" usable only against much smaller ones which destroys them automatically (in effect giving them the ability to "overrun" smaller units).

Re: New Concept For Troops and Fighters
 

Those topics have all been touched on in one post or another already. For more details you will have to weed through but here is shrink wrapped version: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

We already agreed the AI would have fits and need heavy scripting. Essentially it will need its hand held and the "most effective" unit scripted which in turn would be controlled by the current state the AI is in.

We didn't talk about navigating, really I am addressing that point now. There are many ways to work around this. If it is a problem the buildings can be spread out on the ground. It can be made to prevent armies of certain sizes from moving through cities or allow all armies plenty of room.

I do see what you are saying with the swarm tactic. Once again the problem is that you will not be able to make 200 1 unit stacks. The smallest "unit" has not been set; however, I think the idea of a platoon has been forwarded. Anyway lets say you can build 200 1-unit stacks for the sake of discussion. The 200 1 unit stacks would all be knocked out in one or two rounds. It would not give the 800 unit stack a major advantage. The problem with your example is that the total offensive and defensive power of the 800 unit stack will give it dominance over all other units. Swarming with 200 small stacks may be possible; I will give you that. However, swarm tactics are old school. I can already do swarm tactics with the current space combat. Does it work there? I haven't tried it in SE5 yet. I am trying it with one empire in the SFTC beta and not having any luck. The program is splitting the larger units fire power and smoking the swarm ships. Maybe what you are saying is that I need to build a new swarm ship! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif