How does ground combat work, exactly?

[Suicide Junkie]

Zereth said:
What does the Ground Combat racial trait do, exaclty? Is the Ground Combat Damage Modifier Percent added to damage from ground combat weaposn, or subtracted, or is that the percent of the weapon's listed damage they acutally do? Does this apply to the damage reduction from Small Emissive Armor as well? Is there any point in adding Combat Sensors or ECM to your troops, or should you jsut load them up with weapons and armor/shields?

The racial trait adds/subtracts from your to hit chance I believe.
The Damage modifier found in settings.txt is a multiplier.

I'm not sure if emissive armors have any effect on troops. Their effect amounts are too small to make a difference in the results, even if they do work.

Use one or two troops with CS/ECM and have the rest loaded with weapons and shields (or modded armor if it has good protection values).
The best ECM and CS from any one troop is used for all of your troops in the combat.

Same goes with weapon platforms. Have one command unit with high targetting bonuses (talisman even) and it will spread its effect to all the units on the planet.