New Concept For Troops and Fighters

[PvK]

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

[President_Elect_Shang]

shinigami said:
Repair capabilities in SEV are measured by tonnage repaired per turn...

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.

[shinigami]

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.

[Atrocities]

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.

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

[Spectarofdeath]

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.

[President_Elect_Shang]

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!

[shinigami]

I have a silly question, since when do anything other than ships and fleets get experience? Have I missed a memo?

[President_Elect_Shang]

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! 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.

[Suicide Junkie]

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 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.

[Spectarofdeath]

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.