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murtalianconfederacy wrote:I like this idea, because it seems stupid that a hull 20 assault vessel can only carry the same number as troops as a hull 5 assault vessel...

The problem with Assault really came to a head for me when I was doing my FASA Star Trek conversions for a side project of mine. FASA gave troop numbers for their ships, and it was becoming difficult to legitimately have all of the ships have a set Assault trait when one ship might have 2000 troops and another, similarly sized ship would have 4500.

So far it has worked good. The next step in brain bending has been to decide whether it is worth it to define ground unit sizes so that they are actually variable; so insead of just Size 5 Marines and Size 10 Ground Units, the size of ground unit could be variable. Smaller teams would likely have poorer capabilities (or cost an arm and a leg to train and maintain), but it would allow small Assault frigates to go in and drop commando teams on worlds where that is all that is necessary.

Tyrel Lohr wrote:

murtalianconfederacy wrote:I like this idea, because it seems stupid that a hull 20 assault vessel can only carry the same number as troops as a hull 5 assault vessel...

The problem with Assault really came to a head for me when I was doing my FASA Star Trek conversions for a side project of mine. FASA gave troop numbers for their ships, and it was becoming difficult to legitimately have all of the ships have a set Assault trait when one ship might have 2000 troops and another, similarly sized ship would have 4500.

So far it has worked good. The next step in brain bending has been to decide whether it is worth it to define ground unit sizes so that they are actually variable; so instead of just Size 5 Marines and Size 10 Ground Units, the size of ground unit could be variable. Smaller teams would likely have poorer capabilities (or cost an arm and a leg to train and maintain), but it would allow small Assault frigates to go in and drop commando teams on worlds where that is all that is necessary.

That is the next logical step, adding a ground combat system as detailed as the space one is. My example:

Size 1 = battalion sized "commando" unit

Size 5 = brigade/regiment sized unit

Size 10 = division sized unit

That sort of detail works for me anyhow but I grew up with GDW's "Invasion Earth" and "Fifth Frontier War" so I like having armored divs and merc regiments hehe.

MarkG88 wrote:That is the next logical step, adding a ground combat system as detailed as the space one is.

I have been playing around with that aspect to a certain degree. Steve's GSCR from the Companion goes a bit further than I would like, but I have been playing around with the concept of Army vs. Army combat where units have Command Ratings and Command Costs like ships and fight as groups like that. That way you can have effective Infantry, Armor, Artillery, and other units within your ground forces that each have their own abilities. Infantry is high Attrition, Armor is high Defense, Artillery is high Attack, etc.

One change that goes along with this is that only ONE unit per "army" group can add their Attack value to a combat roll, but all units get to add their D Factor. This makes both Attack and D Factor very important, and allow relatively low Attack light infantry to still be good as a support element in a ground invasion.

I could see tying troop size to stats and then modify it by an overall tech level, for games where such is used. Most would still probably fit around the 10 mark, but you would then have the option of fielding units with poorer stats but, but in greater quantities.

Sounds good to me Tyrel. I like the idea of light infrantry contributing as well as heavy armor and artillery. Combined arms in military operations isn't going anywhere anytime soon even with newer weapons and technology.

MarkG88 wrote:Sounds good to me Tyrel. I like the idea of light infrantry contributing as well as heavy armor and artillery. Combined arms in military operations isn't going anywhere anytime soon even with newer weapons and technology.

Under this system, you essentially end up with ground units having the following statistics:

Attack (ATK), Defense (DEF), D Factor (DF), Attrition (ATT), Command Rating (CR), Command Cost (CC), Logistics Rating (LR), and Unit Size, plus any special abilities that might be applied to the unit.

Base unit size, minus any technological modifiers, could probably be derived from adding together all of the other stats. For example, a "Standard Infantry" with ATK 1, DEF 1, DF 2, ATT 3, CR 3, CC 1, LR 3 would have a total (not counting CC) of 13. Let's say we halved this number and rounded up for size; that would put this as a Size 7 unit, requiring 7 points of Assault rating to transport.

Meanwhile, let's say we have a Light Infantry with ATK 1, DEF 1, DF 1, ATT 2, CR 2, CC 1, LR 2. It would have a total of 9, or Size 5. If you knocked one of their traits down they could get down to Size 4, making them almost half the size as the Standard Infantry above.

Ground combat would then be between "armies" or "divisions" (analogous to ship squadrons). Invasions would work the same way as they do now, but once on the planet combined arms will become more important. A player could build some units with a high D Factor to really support his heavy hitters with high Attack, but what if those units (typically Armor in my writeup, I think) are destroyed? Then the player would lose that guaranteed firepower and have to rely on the random D Factor instead.

(PS. I think I am going to split this discussion off into its own topic)

The most detailed use in a campaign I have heard of was a FT conversion that could use the ground combat system simplified. AoG was on the right idea with the original GROPOS, before they turned it into another mini game focusing on individual tanks to determine the fate of the planet (collective *sigh*).

Personally I wouldn't mind trying out some alternative, and heard some good stuff so far.

-Jay

I think some of the core stuff from the BattleTech conversion could be tweaked for what you mean. Light, Medium, Heavy, Assault units w/special abilities, with heavy focus on transporting ground units, and ground combat that can last several turns! Needs some heavy work to be usable as a more generic large-scale ground combat sub system though.

Under this system, you essentially end up with ground units having the following statistics:

Attack (ATK), Defense (DEF), D Factor (DF), Attrition (ATT), Command Rating (CR), Command Cost (CC), Logistics Rating (LR), and Unit Size, plus any special abilities that might be applied to the unit.

Base unit size, minus any technological modifiers, could probably be derived from adding together all of the other stats. For example, a "Standard Infantry" with ATK 1, DEF 1, DF 2, ATT 3, CR 3, CC 1, LR 3 would have a total (not counting CC) of 13. Let's say we halved this number and rounded up for size; that would put this as a Size 7 unit, requiring 7 points of Assault rating to transport.

Meanwhile, let's say we have a Light Infantry with ATK 1, DEF 1, DF 1, ATT 2, CR 2, CC 1, LR 2. It would have a total of 9, or Size 5. If you knocked one of their traits down they could get down to Size 4, making them almost half the size as the Standard Infantry above.

Ground combat would then be between "armies" or "divisions" (analogous to ship squadrons). Invasions would work the same way as they do now, but once on the planet combined arms will become more important. A player could build some units with a high D Factor to really support his heavy hitters with high Attack, but what if those units (typically Armor in my writeup, I think) are destroyed? Then the player would lose that guaranteed firepower and have to rely on the random D Factor instead.

The more I think about your suggestion here Tyrel, the more I like it. You have do a trade off combat capability vs. logistics capacity (strength vs. size of force) and that is keeping with historic military planning and limitations for invading forces. And it dovetails with the existing ground system and keeps it "VBAM-ish" meaning it compliments the space combat aspects while maintaining a strategic level of simulation.

And I'm with Jay, individual tank combat determining a fate of a planet is not "strategic" in scope, scale, or believability *shudders*.

I've just been thinking about Tyrel's ideas here, and I think they're growing on me. The ability to have combined arms, make tough tactical choices in battle, and tie transport capacity to unit sizes, while still playing out quickly and easily, is very VBAM-ish. Simple, detailed, easy and allows for different 'flavors' of military for different Powers.

-Emiricol

EDIT: One additional thought is to make ground combats take longer, a la the BattleTech conversion doc. Having to sustain the strategic picture throughout the system over several turns (for larger system objects) in order to continue the invasion is A Cool Thing. That's pretty easily covered by a simple house rule on Ground Combat length of each turn though.

If you limit the number of "divisions" that can attack based on an army command unit's CR, then you could limit how many total divisions can pariticipate in battle each campaign turn. That would require a player to have a lot more ground units that they normally do, not that I am necessarily against that; if the maintenance costs in particular were drastically reduced, you could end up with the normal homeworld having 10-20 ground units of differing types: enough so that invading such planets would actually be VERY difficult.

That might not be a bad thing though there should be some incentive not to stack dozens of units on every frontier low census planet. Otherwise you could have situations where you simply stack enough units on a planet so that you can be absolutely sure that the enemy cannot eliminate them all in one turn.

I'm not sure making ground units much cheaper is a good thing. Consider the cost of the US fielding a few divisions in a pair of low-intensity conflicts.

MarkG88 wrote: And I'm with Jay, individual tank combat determining a fate of a planet is not "strategic" in scope, scale, or believability *shudders*.

Exactly! Where is the grand sweeping stategy that determines who holds the key supply points and whatnot? There has to be a better way and still make a good integrated game.

-Jay

mwaschak wrote:Exactly! Where is the grand sweeping stategy that determines who holds the key supply points and whatnot? There has to be a better way and still make a good integrated game.

-Jay

Well, if the individual tank is a Bolo....

Though I'd rather see some combat between divisions in a typical campaign.

Rainer wrote: Though I'd rather see some combat between divisions in a typical campaign.

I wouldn't mind that at all. It would be closer to Steve's GSCR system. I always wanted to make something that looked like WiF which some of your wargamers may know. That would be a serious commitment to play out though .

-Jay