Openciv3 - Military units

[Guildmaster]

TO build a unit, to need the following:
v Workhours or production
x resources & energy
y soldiers (this would be 1 for infantry, or a crew for a given vehicle)
z money
* To build "Elite" units, the resource cost and the production and the money are all doubled.
Once these three are met with a minimum requirement on a per unit basis, your facility will provide x number of units per turn. At the beginning of your turn, your military advisor confronts you with the total production of units for that turn and you can deploy them as you like according to the deployment rules. Over the course of that turn, those units are said to be en route to their deployment zones. The end of your turn, you have those units there either in reinforced armies, garrisons, new units, or whatever.
As for stats...
Zone: This is Land/Air/Water/Space/Other
Firepower: This determines how much damage a unit can inflict on another unit.
Armor: This is the defense capability of the unit to withstand an attack.
Stealth: This determines how difficult it is for an enemy to spot the unit
Vision: This determines how easily the unit can spot enemy units
Movement: How far and how fast a unit can move during combat
Range: This is the range of hexes a unit can attack 0 is melee, 10 can attack from off the battle map
Units with a 10 for attack range also have an accuracy stat.
Veteran: green-experienced-veteran
Morale: poor-low-average-high-excellent
Air units also have a maneuverabiliy stat
Naval units also have a special range stat to determine how long it can remain at sea before the crew starves to death.

Combat:
To enter combat, a special sub-map is created, no more than 50 tall with it's own set of variables. Armies are broken up into smaller bits and put onto this map depending on how the situation arose. Commanders and Great Generals have a tenancy to get their armies here at higher elevations and greater concealment. This map is determined mainly by the main terrain type in the hex where the combat is taking place, and is randomly generated at the start of combat. This part is done very much like command & conquer or warcraft and can be automatic by letting your military advisor decide what to do or you could command your units yourself. For units involved off the map grid, like short range ground support fighters and rocket artillery and stuff, these would pepper the area at random intervals.
This would give soooooo many well-deserved advantages to the player with sattelite imaging and radar tracking and stuff. And I think this would be the highlight of too many players, like building up to a main event. IT would also give rise the the idea that infantry trained (or raised) in a certain terrain would always enjoy an advantage when fighting in that terrain.

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Goober

[amjayee]

This is long, sorry.

Some thoughts about building units: to create a unit, you would need a) men b) weapons c)training.

You build the weapons in a factory. They consist of a "set" for one unit; for example, for a legion, with 6000 men, you need legion equipment for 6000 men. The equipment need to be repaired and maintained; so, some effort from your factories are needed to upkeep the unit equipment. This requires money, resources and workyears.

The equipment can be as well fighterplanes, tanks etc. This idea gives you an opportunity to "disband" the army, but store the equipment for future use.

You get the men from your population. There are various means of acquiring them, depending on the era. The men die and retire, so the upkeep of a unit requires some men. This would be done mainly automatically, but the men needed for the army, cannot work in your fields and factories.

You don't have to train the men, but the better training they get, the better they fight. Some units require certain amount of training - you cannot put anyone in the cockpit of a jet fighter, and expect him to operate it properly. Also to upkeep the unit's training level, some training is needed - the men are replaced, so the new men need to be trained. Training is done mainly in military bases and garrisons, with appropriate facilities and training fields for that. You can train them anywhere, but in garrisons it will be more efficient.

Also to upkeep the armies you need money for wages, and food.

To change your idea of elite units, I suggest that in order to make an elite unit, you need a) more training; certain level of training is required to call the unit elite. b) more money; good men demand better wages. c) in some cases, better equipment, depending on the case. Upkeeping elite units should be very costly, but they are more faithful to you. You could for example have some kind of praetorian guard to protect your leaders, like musketeers in France. It's also possible to have some kinds of spec forces units, in modern times, that are capable of carrying out special missions, like terrorist strikes, counter-terrorist actions, or some other kinds of things - kinda like spies in civ2, but slightly different duties.

About unit stats, here are some thoughts. Since it seems we are using pre-defined unit types, we could have more properties for each unit type. Here's a list of what I think should be used:

Hitpoints/Amount (of men, ships, aircraft) The original amount of members for this unit type. For each unit would be listed

Hitpoints left
Wounded/Damaged members

Then continuing with unit type stats:

Domain: (is Zone more appropriate? I don't know.) land/sea/air/space as you stated.

Firepower: as you suggested

Rate of fire: how many attacks per "turn" - not a game turn, but combat turn

Attack: the strength of unit's attack, for each domain separately! Each unit would have a land attack, sea attack, air attack and space attack

Defense: For each domain, as with attack; determines how well the unit can sustain attacks coming from that domain. It doesn't mean stopping an attack, but avoiding it.

Armor: determines how well the unit's armor can stop attacks. Two numbers, as Victor has suggested. The second number indicates the attack stat that is requried even to hope to break the shielding.

Range: somewhat like you suggested.

Evasion/Maneuverability: for sea, air and space units, possibly for machine units, like tanks also. How well the "vehicle" can be steered and maneuvered. Perhaps all units could have this figure. Infantry would have the highest possible value, artillery the lowest. Should we get rid of defense and replace it with evasion, as Victor suggested? I don't know. After all, they mean mostly the same - avoiding attack. But; defense means capabilities to defend oneself, and evasion means running away from danger. So they need to be kept both. Defense means counter-attack capabilities, and capabilities to actively stop an attack.

Vision: how well units can notice other units

Stealth: how well units can avoid noticing

Training: the training level. Possibly from 0 to 100. Pre-set levels should not be used, this has been debated somewhere.

Experience: how battle-proven the unit is. This will start to decrease very soon after the battle - since the men are replaced, the unit cannot remember the battles fought centuries ago. Possibly also from 0 to 100, or with several levels, as you suggested. Replaces the Veteran stat in your suggestion.

Morale: this depends heaviliy on conditions, and affects quite much how the men fight. From 0 to 100, a percentage.

Supply: the supply level of the unit.

About air unit mobility, I also discussed that in the evasion property. I'd like to add it for all unit types.

About the naval unit special property, that can be dealt with the movement system I proposed. After all, a turn is one year, and no one survives on year without food, so this seems unnecessary. Also we have to remember supplying of the unit. That could handle that. And units _can_ starve on land, too.

With these, the strategical combat could be modeled really well, taking into account enough factors.

[Martin the Dane]

Just a little note (I discovered Openciv3 today)
Make a realistic upgrade system. For instance: when a player discovers firearms his troops will (gradually) stop using bows and arrows. There should be some control over the process, and the upgrade time should be relative to the upgrade time.

I like the idea of seperating men and equipment, but I think it should be possible to combine/recombine equipment in variouse ways, after all the germans did produce quite a number of rather bisar machines during WW2.

This of cause needs to be cept simple.