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%.