armies and spying on them

[DeathByTheSword]

i just had an idea.

we are going to use armies instead of seperate units. so my idea is that when you build an infantry unit you dont build one solder but you build a squad of 10 men. if you build a light tank unit you would get a squad of 5 light tanks. and with heavy tanks you get 3 and with artillary only 2. the units in squad can not work without eachother and always move together. several squads make an army. the fun part is that you have a little more realistic army ( in Civ and smac you would have one infantry that is more expanse and stronger than tanks ) and other pro is that when the infantry squad fires it actually fires 10x (for each man one time) and a light tank squad only 3x. this way you have a more balance army because now you can say that the infantry is almost as strong as the light infantry. i think this system also work better than using sliders to build units ( a little bit like BNT. you lose track of what is a good number and what is not ).


SPYING on an army:

you would have 3 different types of spying:

1: the normal estimating on how much units. you would get a number that is X% off from the real number of each kind of unit

so if you would have :
200 1-infantry and 300 2-infantry
100 1-light tanks

the enemy would see:
400 infantry
50 light tanks

2: air recon

this would give a smaller X% off from the real number and would give more precies info about which kind of information

so if you would have:
200 1-infantry and 300 2-infantry
100 1-light tanks

the enemy would see:
450 infantry of 1-infantry and 2-infantry
75 light tanks of 1-light tanks

3: infiltrate

you would get a spy in the army that would give over X turns precies information. it would take a while to get all the info so each turn you get a piece of the puzzle.

so if you would have:
200 1-infantry and 300 2-infantry
100 1-light tanks

the enemy would get:
turn 1:
atleast 100 1-infantry

turn 2:
200 1-infantry
atleast 30 2-infantry

turn 3:
200 1-infantry and 300 2-infantry
100 1-light tanks


I myself like this system of building armies and spying. i came on the idea of the squad because i played the game 'ground control'
the spying idea came when i just woke up but anyways what you all think?

[Kuciwalker]

I think you shouldn't build an "infantry squad" and it automatically have ten soldiers. You should say "train 500 soldiers with assault rifles, anti-air rockets, and anti-tank rockets, in X:Y:Z ratio". You could use presets, of course, if you didn't want to do the micromanagement. You would be prevented from having tiny one-man scout units by requiring each army to have at least one HQ and/or communications element, which may take up 20+ soldiers on its own.

[DeathByTheSword]

yes and what you are saying is just what i want to prevent. just using some sliders to build 10.000 units is boring......i want something new....not the same all over again....if we are going to use that system then we could as well drop all the graphics and make a game that fits on a floppy.....

[Kuciwalker]

I don't recall a system like I proposed ever being used in a TBS before... unless it was Europa Universalis, which I haven't played. I think this would actually be quite fun, and force the player to use combined-arms tactics.

[DeathByTheSword]

i dont have a problem with giving different weapons to units....i support it that is why i used 1-infantry and 2-infantry in the examples. but i dont like the idea of just giving number of units of how much you want because you will lose prespective on which number are to little and which are to much

[Blake]

I actually favour something more like Skywalkers idea. But rather than % of each type, it would just be something like this:
Build 400 Machinegun Infantry
Build 50 Bazooka Infantry
Build 50 Commandos

Altough I am not adverse to having minimum sizes of squads, so you might have to build commandos in groups of 10's and Machinegun Infantry in groups of 50. And if the squad size gives an indication of strength (ie one squad of infantry ~= 1 platoon of tanks) then all the better.

The main question, is what do we base the squad size on?
I would be inclined to make it so that 1 squad of *any* unit takes exactly the same cargo/transport space.

EDIT: And Spying
That sounds reasonable enough, a bit of uncertanity which goes down over time. It'd also be cool to be able to spy by having moles/insiders in the enemy army. They could randomly get recruited into an army and then you get perfect information on that army

[DeathByTheSword]

I really resent the idea of saying lets build:
Build 400 Machinegun Infantry
Build 50 Bazooka Infantry
Build 50 Commandos

i would much more injoy as Civ kind of build where you can build one thing at a time. and in this case on squad at a time. each squad will be around the same weight and around the same strengh if of the same technology and stuff

[targon]

Interesting.
Another possibility for this kind of stuff: fake units. Even most high tech means of _distant_ recon may be easily fooled using simple measures, including "balloon" tanks, foil bridges etc.

[Kuciwalker]

I like equipping soldiers with weapons, rather than having the computer think of them as different unit types, because it allows for the "interchangability" of personnel. Tanks would require a certain number of people each, each of whom would require training. Different levels of training would result in different levels of effectiveness. Troops could be trained to do different things. A soldier could be able to use an assault rifle and a SAM. Also, you would have to build the weapons as well as train the people, allowing realistic distinctions between where "shields" (actually I think we should track more than one type of shield production, as per the trade goods thread) and "gold" are necessary to build things. It costs money to train people, but uses materials to build things.

[targon]

I think per-unit system is't especialy honest. It has too big "integration step", so if you're building some unit and it's 99% complete it's still unable to defend itself agains occational aggresion etc.

[DeathByTheSword]

you can talk about it all you want but i still think that a civ based production is much better....but what i suggest is that you give different number to each unit type.....

[Kuciwalker]

Targon - what do you mean?

If it's what I think it is, it won't be a problem (alert: excessive pronoun usage ). Say you have the facilities to train 200 troops at a time, but you want to train 1000. You tell it "train 1000 troops" and it trains them, 200 at a time. So the army will be partially complete.

[Gateway103]

Targon, your concern is indeed a valid one, which is one of the reasons why Blake introduced the idea of Microturns. The idea was posted on the old board, and as such I must recall what I can from memory alone, so bear with me for any unclear points and unfortunate errors.

Each Turn that player plays in is a Player-turn. Every player-made decision can only be issued in each Macro-Turns. Micro-Turns, however, are more like slices of a Player-turn, in which productions are made, units moved, combat fought, etc.

For the sake of the argument, let us say that 10 Micro-turns make up 1 Player-turn. Now let us say you set a city with capapbiliy of producing 1000 Marines a Player-Turn to produce Marines. Now, say enemy army is also approaching this city.

While the enemy army is close, they can't reach you on the first Micro-turn, perhaps it'll take them 3 Micro-turns let's say. Hence, at the end of the 3rd Micro-turn, you'll have produced 300 Marines, in which they are capable of defending your city.

Now perhaps the combat ensued at the end of the 3rd turn ends in a stalemate, but say you've suffered 30% casulties, left with 210 Marines. At the fourth Micro-turns, however, you would've gained another 100 Marine reinforcement just from production alone, while the enemy may or may not receive additional reinforcements. Hence, Micro-turns computation system decreases the irritation of having to built a complete unit before they are useful.

Other features/potentials of the Micro-turn system includes:
1) With a build queue system, it is possible to change production mid-way through a Player-turn. E.g. spend the first 3 Micro-Turns building say a Tank Battalion, and the rest 7 Micro-Turns on some other things, say a Fusion Power Plant.

2) While rush-building can be rationalized by Blake's idea on Trade Goods, Micro-turn system places some restriction to keep player from abusing rush-building techniques. That is, some things must take a minimum of certain number of Micro-turns to complete at a given site, regardless how much resources you have. This would depend, I imagine, on the industrial capability of the site (perhaps you can double output for a short while, but not increase by tenfold), social policies, contrustion projects, etc.

3) Movement are also made in Micro-turns, where each army moves certain number of terrain units each Micro-turns towards its destination, depending on its movement rate. Movement order will also be reliant on army movement rate (Blake had an elegant model on this, but I can't recall all the details).

Coupled with ZOC (Zone of Control), Micro-turn movement makes faster units able to intercept enemy armies possible. In addition, depending on military policies/doctrines (i.e. the rule of engagments each army/faction adapts/uses), it may make distraction/delaying/ambuse/hit-and-run/feint tactics viable (and useful).

4) Similar model can be used for the combat resolution system to simulate more interesting, and hopefully more reasonable, battles.

5) And more (don't feel like drowning the post ^_^)

-Gateway103

[Blake]

Nice summary Gateway.

2) While rush-building can be rationalized by Blake's idea on Trade Goods, Micro-turn system places some restriction to keep player from abusing rush-building techniques. That is, some things must take a minimum of certain number of Micro-turns to complete at a given site, regardless how much resources you have. This would depend, I imagine, on the industrial capability of the site (perhaps you can double output for a short while, but not increase by tenfold), social policies, contrustion projects, etc.

Yep, rushbuilding is automatically limited by the "Production" requirement of buildable stuff, if something requires 500 raw Production Points to build, then at a minimum it requires that much production from the city and there is no way to store or transport raw production.

Getting back to units. A single infantryman is too small a thing to build/train. Like generally a group of infantry go through training together and have a sergeant in command and stuff, so it's only sensible to build infantry in squad sized groups.

However heres how it would work in combat, say there are 10 squads of 10 infantry (100 total), they enter battle, and half die. You dont end up with 10 squads at 50% strength, you end up with 5 full squads. So in short it wont be possible to "heal" an infantry squad, the infantry die, survivors form new squads, you replace the dead with fresh recruits. So there will be no such thing as a free lunch through magical healing.

Note: Prehaps there could be injured as well. So a battalion of 1000 fresh infantry are sent off to battle, 300 are killed and 200 are injured. After a few turns the injured have recovered so you end up with a battalion of 700 infantry. The 300 are DEAD and therfore the battalion will never heal back to it's original strength of 1000, you must replace the dead with fresh recruits. Injuryeath ratio could depend on such things as weapons used.

[targon]

The concept of micro-turns is in fact valid and... old one. Analogous system is used for meele combat in AD&D system. So it's trusted and tested design, simply translated to completely other base (strategy rather than roll-playing). Should work.
Concerning infantry loses, if I remember correctly, unit is concerned "neutralized" (read FUBAR) if loses exceeds 50%.

[Blake]

In the heat of battle anyway. There would be time "between turns" for squads to recover, regroup etc.

[targon]

How you can imagine regrouping of defeated units? In POW camp only, IMHO You can't regroup any units in the battle line, you may in fact let them retreat and face enemy with fresh troops of the second echelon.

[Blake]

I see what you mean. I mean anyone who isn't killed or captured by the enemy can be assigned to a new squad . But mainly i was talking aobut when your army wins the battle, but sustained losses.

Speaking of PoW's, that could be kinda a fun thing to include. Prehaps they have to be kept in Prisons/camps, so that if a player wants their captured troopers back they can launch a covert assault against the prison. I think such a thing should do a lot for faction morale.

[targon]

Yes, and different factions may sign a treaty like "keep PoWs alive and exchange them under .... conditions".

[Gateway103]

On POW:

You may also trade enemy POWs back for whatever.

Or place the prison camp near your military/economic/industrial assets, such as to encourage the enemy from not bombing the place from orbit (just see how they explain to their public the act of bombing their own captive... hmm... I see room for propaganda)

etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Units:

We were talking about using a reserve system back then. Basically, you can put units, be it infantry, tanks, or spaceships, in reserves (I use reserve in a broad sense, meaning from troop reserves to mothballing equipment) to reduce maintenance cost.

The idea is that you can construct equipment and train troops but put them in reserves (rather than have them active from built), and when needed, you mobolize them (taking some time and perhaps resources to get everything up and running.) For defensive purposes, all cities without any active defensive forces may (still undecided) draw a fraction of units from the reserve for defensive purposes (depending on city size, military policies, etc.), with a penalty in effectiveness, should the city came under attack.

Now one of the major problems with this model is where to store these reserve units.

I
One idea is to have planet/system-scale abstracted reserve cache. This has its own merit of being somewhat reasonable, and allows the attack on the reserve system possible (think Pearl Harbour scenarios), as well as Blitz tactics (attack quickly before mobolization is complete).

But keeping track of all these reserve system (i.e. numbers) may be too much details for the players, not to mention micro-management when you want to adjust reserve sizes of each planet/system.

II
The second idea is to have a single abstracted reserve system. But with the following restrictions/features:
1) Units can only be mobolized at certain sites only, perhaps the capital of a planet, or places where certain infrastructures are built (some sort of mobolization center).

2) Time delay on mobolization would be significant (proportional to nearest capital and faction capital?) such that it would be faster to send active troops from the point of construction to the destination then put active troops in reserve at the point of construction and subsequently mobolize at the destination. This is to deter the magic wand effect of troop "teleporting."

3) Damage to units in reserve may be done via destroying one of these mobolization centers, and of course via espionage efforts.

III
A third idea (well, a variant of the first idea) is to have actual physical locations for the reserve (as opposed to abstracted reserve system, i.e. not just numbers in spreadsheet). And subsequently only Reserve units en-site may be mobolized. Units can be put into Reserve mode (in addtion to other choices like Fortify, Sentry, and other similar actions in civ models) at either any cities, or locations with the right infrastructures.

For the latter case where only locations with the right infrastructures may house units in Reserve modes, these locations are also where the Reserve units may be mobolized from.

Units in Reserve mode have reduced maintainence cost, but will react to enemy incursions although will fight at lower effectiveness (say 10%, and modified by military policies and other factors). Reserve mode also prohibits movements.

Again, to mobolized a unit in Reserve mode takes time, where the units' combat effectiveness slowly returns to normal. You may also consider this as a cheaper but less combat-effective Sentry mode (rate of recovery depend on policies and other factors).

And obviously, you can attack these Reserve units, destroying them before your enemy can completely mobolize them (or bypass them, since mobolization takes time)
-------

Now which idea is better, that's still not decided. Perhaps there are better ideas, and if so feel free to share them.

I am sorry this post is a bit long, and my explanation not entirely coherent. Hence, if there are any confustions and/or mistakes, please tell me and I'll try to clarify them.

-Gateway103

[Kuciwalker]

Gateway - your solution to targon's concern in fact doesn't make sense. Now, how would 1000 tanks at a 10% state of completion fight like 100 tanks at a 100% state of completion? Or how would 1000 infantry 10% of the way through their training fight the same as 100 infantry 100% of the way through their training?

I think each unit should have an immutable construction time. Say, it will ALWAYS take 1 turn to build a tank. If you build 100 tanks, but you only have the production capacity (factories) to build 1 tank at a time (unrealistic, I know, but it's an example), then it will take you 100 turns to complete the entire 100 tanks, but you will get 1 tank each turn, assuming you have sufficient resources. If you have the production capacity to build 100 tanks at a time, you get 100 tanks in one turn, assuming you have sufficient resources. Rush-building should be restricted to the emergency acquisition of resources.

[Blake]

Erm, realistically, you should be able to churn out guns, tanks, fighters and spaceships as quickly as your production capacity allows. When building 1000 tanks, build 1 tank to completion, then start the next tank, when the build order is 10% complete, there will be 100 100% complete tanks. It's how stuff has been built since Ford invented the production line

However, *training* should take time. One possible way is to have recruitment happen at a fixed rate:
Every planet has a civilian population. P
A certain %age of the pop is able to go to war, these are young adults ready to grab a gun and defend their faction A. 'Ables' still work in factories and breed and so on.
Depending on settings, 'Ables' become 'Recruits' in your army, with rank 'Enlisted'.
Then have different ranks (example, only)
Enlisted -> Private -> Corporal -> Sergeant -> Lieutenant -> Captain ....
Each turn, a small %age of each rank will get promoted, promotion rate might depend on social engineering, the presence of training facilities, etc
When you construct a gun, tank or spaceship, it needs a crew. Anyone can use a gun, and the more powerfull the equipment, the higher rank troops nessecary to man it.
Rifle -> Enlisted
Rifle + Body Armour -> Private
Hovertank -> Lieutenant + 4 Privates.
Spaceship -> Captain + Lots of lower ranks.

Thats the basic framework, for what I think should be a workable, managable and flexible system.

[Gateway103]

Regarding construction of Tanks and other hardwares, basically what Blake said. Bascially, a customer of a factory capable of producing 12 million coke cans a year need not wait an entire year to receive an order of 1 million coke cans. With any luck, a few months should be sufficient (mathematically 1 month, but there can be delays or other prior orders the factory must fullfill first)

As for training of manpower, indeed there must be a fixed amount of time required to go from new recruits to able soldiers, which is why a reserve system is useful (the abstracted type, tending towards idea 1 and 2).

To extend on what Blake had said, depending on your governmental policies, your population may or may not have to serve in the military for certain number of years during their young adult life (some countries have such mandatory policies, while others don't). For factions without such mandatory military services, however, they can still enlist/recruit young adults to serve in the military (US for example).

Either way, at the cost of resource spending (training portion of military budget) as well as economic potential (young adults train in military rather than being productive in economic sense), you faction will maintain a steady supply of able soldiers.

The size of such training pool would be customizable, but left alone (i.e. player not meddling with it), will be primarily dependent on military budget and population size (assuming a generic age distribution), as well as faction beliefs.

Now everytime a troop is actually assembled, the hardwares must be manufactured or taken from reserves, and the manpower is drawn from the soldier pool. Since the replenishment of the soldier pool is a slow process, that is, even if you decide to crank up the recruitment number and have the resource to pay for it, it'll still be a while before the effect is shown (both positive in terms of solider reserves, and negative in terms of economics and more)

Thus, not only does this encourage strategic planning (e.g. prepare for a war few years before hand). It also places a strong deterent for warmongers, as over-enlisting of young adults for extended period of time would pose a danger to your economy in the long term (especially if the war isn't going as well as you want). War wariness and other worse syndroms could also plague your society, placing challenges to the gamers.

There are other less direct way of increasing/maintaining military prepareness of a faction. For example, education policies such as a mandatory or elective class in highschool to teach basic military knowledge and skills. However, I will not cover these here. These policies and other avenues shall be discussed at the appropriate time (i.e. not now )

-Gateway103

[Kuciwalker]

However, you should not get one coke can at a time, or one tank at a time. You'll probably get 1000 coke cans at a time, or 100 tanks at a time, that sort of thing. That needs to be modeled.

[Gateway103]

Skywalker, you must realize that the power of an assembly line is that while the first unit is upon copmletion, the second is just a bit behind, the third a little further away, and so on. For example, the usual scenario may be that when the first tank is 100% completed, the second one is probably say 90% completed, the 3rd 80%, and so on. Hence while to get just one unit completed takes say T amount of time, to get a total of two units completed will only takes T * 1.xx, where xx represent the additional fraction of time needed, rather than 2T.

To illustrate this, let's say it takes exactly 1 months for the first tank to go from 0 to 100%, and assuming you placed a very large order that'll last more than a year. Then with the above figures (10% differences), at the end of the first month, you'll have one completed tanks, and several underway (Fig. 1). At the end of the second month, 11 will be completed (Fig. 2). Figure 3 shows the progress at the end of the 6th months, and Figure 4 shows the result at the end of the year.

If you think about the production rate of completed units per month for each month, you'll notice that first month has a rate of 1 unit/month, while the rest all have 10 units/month. This is the power of the assembly line. While it may take time to get thing started, once it starts it can keep on maintaining a high production rate to fullfill the order.

Now then, why do we intutively think there is something wrong, that you don't get 1 coke can at a time, but rather a package of say 1000? On the factory side, there is nothing wrong, you do get one completed after another. However, this illusion is due to the fact that it is not economical to ship the coke cans to your customer on a one-can basis. It is much more cost-effective to send to your customer the entire order once completed, if he/she can wait. Or send a big portion once a while.

Yet, the difference between coke cans and tank production thus emerges. No coke company wants to pay for shipment cost on a one-can basis, plus they undoubtedly have a large reserves.

But as long as the military can afford the cost (i.e. have the budget), and is willing to get their hands on these new hardwares ASAP (perhaps depend on policies), the factory has no reason not to send the finished product on a one-unit (if large product like tanks or ships, which unlike coke cans, don't "package" well) or on one-package-unit basis (e.g. a crate of guns). This is especially true if there is no reserves on these hardwares, the troop need the hardwares for further training, and/or enemy is lurking nearby.

-Gateway103

[Kuciwalker]

Yes. You guys are saying the SAME THINGS I AM. I'm just also saying that when a tank is 90% complete, it can't fight. If a tank UNIT is 90% complete, some of it may be complete, but not necessarily 90%. Say each tank in the unit is 90% complete. Then the ZERO percent of the tank unit can fight. However, if 90% of the unit is 100% complete, and 10% of the unit is 0% complete, then 90% of the unit can fight. Therefore the game needs to track both the number of construction facilities (which is variable) and the construction time (which is ABSOLUTE, or maybe changes with tech), with resource availability only halting construction.