Ground Warfare - Costing

[Valiens Nantaris]

So whilst fleeting has a pretty well defined system of determining sides, Grounding doesn’t.

On the other hand, now I’ve had the ‘Quality’ rating introduced it makes things easier.

So therefore I propose the following ratings:

• A = 200%
• B = 150%
• C = 100%
• D = 0.75%
• E = 0.5%

This is a percentage of normal cost. Naturally better units are more expensive.

This is the criteria I’ve come up with for costing units. Each unit is then multiplied by the above to find its total cost.

• Infantry cost 1 point each.
• Vehicles are costed by their largest dimension each (length for tanks, height for tanks etc).
• Artillery as dimension or 10 points per gun, whichever is higher.
• Aircraft are costed by largest dimension multiplied by 2.

I would suggest that 500 points would be a good sized skirmish, 2000 for a big invasion.

Thoughts?

 

[Ellie Mors]

I personally don't like the idea of trading points (quantity) for tools (quality), but as far as this goes it appears fair.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]
How else can it be balanced then?

There needs to be a means of keeping battles fair for invasions or else it's all just "I have 50 AT-ATs arrive" each turn.

With that in mind a points or transfer is necessary.

Good quality units need to pay more.

Not sure where else to go.

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]
For the same reason I do not magically handwave hundreds of dark side tendrils with my Sith Lord, people should not be expected to handwave hundreds of units of NPCs with every turn. If someone does this, then it is up to the faction admins on both sides to arrive at a decision to make sure it doesn't continue and/or if further steps need to be taken to ensure fairness continues. Making a point system detracts from writing quality and subverts the method of writing into an HP/AMMO sort of deal. As much as this has already gripped fleeting, and remains why the only parts in it I take part in are passive positions where I don't need to worry about crunching %s and other stuff in relation to hull and shields and define actual numbers that have no actual context in the writing beyond arbitrary standards, it shouldn't move on to every facet of NPC writing.

You can't exactly shove every kind of NPC into each of these, and these don't accurately portray each of them either. One person may believe something is better than another, and when someone argues that they're both elites it becomes impossible for any troop to better the other because they will bicker back and forth that they have been specifically trained for the instances wherein they might combat other special forces. You can't stop godmodding with numbers, and you can't curb bad writing with statistics. I come from a world of stats and dice rolls (literally programmed entire RP games that ran off of it so that even writing was curtailed to player stats) and I can tell you that this isn't the best solution. It may appear, for now, to be better, but once you've gone several months doing this it becomes an even larger hassle and in hindsight it was better how it was originally. The best solution I can give you is that responsibility is a better policing method than any, educate people on what is responsible and encourage factions to take a stance of common sense on writing.

 

[sabrina]

May be write a damage guide similar to pvp take a hit one.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]
As someone who is a wargamer and an avid military RPer, I know it CAN be done. However, it does rely on everyone playing by the same rules and not shrugging off an artillery barrage with one scratched speeder.

That's beside the point though. Both sides need to choose roughly the same amount of ground forces, like in a fleet battle. How you select that army though is the key.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] I will agree with that

 

[Gir Quee]

I really like your suggestion [member="Valiens Nantaris"], and would like to potentially test it out on the battlefield forum here to check out how well it works in reality. This will probably have to wait until after the current invasion, given how stretched I am.

I had a similar idea in my head, except there were only three quality modifiers: substandard x0.75, standard (x1 cost), and advanced (x2 cost).

But in retrospect, I think 5 categories makes more sense to deal with the extremes of the spectrum (from the B1 to the mythosaur). I'm kind of curious as to how we judge the differences between sorting a unit from Category A or Category B. Would it be the number of advanced features or something like its uniqueness?

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Gir Quee"]
It's on the NPC subs.

Elite units I'm making sure are very rare because they are the best of the best.

 

[sabrina]

an unit of acolytes would be?

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
Depends what the NPC sub in the Codex is.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] what is best way doing a sub for them, as a minor faction?

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
You can have unit subs as a minor faction. I have plenty.

 

[Captain Larraq]

Personally, I'm more a fan of going off of tonnage than length.

A 85 ton Tank and a 25 ton IFV are both in the 8-10 meter length range, but one will clearly kick the other's backside.


Also, quality rating of NPC body armor could be taken into consideration for infantry point value. Say... 8+ rating costs twice a much, where quality 4 and lower costs half as much.

Including advanced/heavy weaponry with the unit should also adjust the point value of the infantry. If 1 in 10 are wielding a missile launcher, 2 in 10 are wielding a "support weapon", and the entire unit is equipped with a bucket of grenades... at some point, that needs to be balanced out.

 

[sabrina]

Possible give units a strength when being subbed

Like points system in warhammer

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Gir Quee"]
It's on the NPC subs.

Elite units I'm making sure are very rare because they are the best of the best.

I was thinking more about vehicles when I said that.

In some ways, tonnage makes more sense in terms of cost per power, but there's a lot of canon material that doesn't have that measurement readily available (unlike length).

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

Weight is also hard to judge and how does one convert that into points easily? Metres are simpler.

A points/strength system will not ever be in the template. It's too far down that path.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] fair enough

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] do you have character/faction you could use this idea with, as we have started getting empires troops together it might be fun to try this.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
The Silver Sanctum Coalition.