Troops in Proportions Mod

[PvK]

PsychoTechFreak asked me off-board about troops in the Proportions mod, and I thought my reply was interesting and good to know for all players of the mod, so I'm copying it here.

His observation was that large troops (i.e. vehicles) seemed to be getting killed off by infantry, and so he thought infantry were simply better than large troops. He also asked if Elite Infantry got any other bonus besides +1 to hit.

My reply:

Try mixing large troops with infantry, and/or using large troops with shields and/or armor. Infantry and vehicles have complementary effects - either one is weaker without the other. Infantry are cheap and quite hard to kill but have much lower firepower than vehicles. Vehicles without shields or armor are particularly vulnerable. Infantry by themselves don't do much damage. Vehicles by themselves (except maybe high-tech shielded designs) tend to get killed quickly. Vehicles and armor together add the bonuses and damage resistance of infantry to the firepower of vehicles. In theory and (I think/hope) in practice, this leads to some semi-interesting design trade-offs.

Elite infantry only have one other advantage - the silly way SE4 handles vehicle_size to-hit bonuses. I believe that (unlike weapon to-hit bonuses) both share and stack, so if you have 100-200 elite infantry, all your ground units in your army will hit each time, until your elite infantry gets killed off. So, it turns out to be a major advantage.

PvK