Crews

[Prokonsul Piotrus]

We are threading on new and dangerous grounds here - I dont recall any good solution for this problem in older games.

We have to answer few questions first:

1. Should 'military draft' ratio affect
a) population
b) economy
c) happiness

2. Should 'military draft' be based on:
a) global/empire population
b) planet near shipyard/army base build up population
c) tech level
d) race pics

3. Should 'army draft' be same or saparate from 'navy draft'?

4. Should recruit quality matter for battle purposes and/or should army units/crew gain experience?

[Ablaze]

Looking back on this thread made me realize that I never explained why I wanted both recruitment from civilian population and retirement back into civilian life rather then the simpler model (mathematically) of approaching some optimal percentage of the population.

My thinking was that this would allow a large occupying force on an enemy planet to spawn a foothold colony of your race without actually having to transport civilians. This would never be an efficient method of colonization even for warlord races, but in highly contested worlds it would become a rather interesting strategic factor.

I’m pretty sure this particular strategic nuance is no longer viable in the freeorion project, however, since (to my knowledge) multi-race planets are not going to be allowed. I’ll have to wait until my little project is up to see how well it works strategically.

To address your questions Prokonsul:

1) The only things I see coming out of having the volunteer army effect the economy or moral of a planet is added complexity. Perhaps there could be a method for instating an actual draft which would effect the economy or moral, but I would consider this a low priority requirement.

2) I think the level of standing army should be based only on the planet’s population and race pics. Any further complication of the system would make the level of standing army that would emerge on a particular planet hard to predict for the user, and make the game less understandable. It seems to me that some sort of military recruitment building would make a positive addition to game play, but like all buildings in freeorion, it should be a rare thing.

3) We all know my answer, they should be the same.

4) This seems like needless complication to me, right now I see no positive impact on game play.

[Impaler]

How about ships and Armies consume a "Cadet" resorse which is like money in that its pooled across the whole of the Empire and keept in a central "Reserve". This pool of Cadets will cost money and maintance. Replacing losses/ repairing ships cost extra Recruits. Training Facilites will produce Recruits and consume money and might consume population in the process. Their is normaly no Happyness penalty unless you start instituting Drafts either at the Imperial or local level, this alows you to incresse Cadet production though the effort is not likly to be sustainable in the long run due to unhappyness penalties.

Also for Planetary Garrisons I kind of like the idea of the Moo2 Structures that will produce Marines/Tanks each turn up to a certain number then stop. This kind of reflects the capacity and turn over of bodies. The thing I didnt like was the caping of just 1 such facility, I should be able to build as many as I can afford to make. Any Ground troops that are on a planet that lacks sufficient Facilites (because I just invaved perhapse) will cost extra maintance.

[Ranos]

Having to recruit army and navy personel seems like a great idea to me. Impaler's idea on this sounds even better. It is one more resource to manage but it would add another level to ship building and armies that hasn't been seen in other games.

Armies and crews having experience isn't an extra complication at all. The player doesn't have to do anything with it. What it does is to improve the aim and manueverability of both ground and space forces. This would add one more factor into both kinds of combat that could affect the outcome of a battle.

Army unit experience was a factor in MOO3 but unfortunately due to the poor programming, is one that doesn't get tested much in the game. I think we ought to give it a second chance in FO.

[Ablaze]

That's a very good idea impaler, and it might just work well.. up to a point. The problem I see with it is that it makes your ability to defend any particular (undeveloped) planet increase in a direct proportion to your empire size. A much better model is one that allows systems to support other systems in your empire, but in which the value of that support decreases as the distance between the two systems increase. This puts a larger empire at less of an advantage over a smaller empire and therefore expands the strategic part of the game. I think we can all agree that expanding the strategic part of the game is good.

Ranos: You're right that adding experience modifiers to ground units doesn’t have to increase the UI. However, if it doesn’t then there is no indicator of how much experience a unit has. This leads to a situation in which some units fight better then others and the user cannot easily predict why. In essence this leads to MOO3.

Let's get past that, though, and assume there's a simple indicator that doesn’t clutter the UI much. Now, say you have an invading army.. how do you act in order to get an optimal ROI (return on investment)? The best thing to do would be to use experienced troops on the larger and less risky battles and less experienced troops on the others. So in order to reach optimal ROI you would have to look at the experience of every troop after each battle and see if they need to be promoted to a more experienced squad. If they do, then you would have to find the best squad for them and transport them there. Then you would have to think about replacements for the squad you just transferred that unit out of. This is a lot of micromanagement.

[Ranos]

That is true and I never thought of it that way. I wasn't thinking about the fact that MOO3 had a reserve for ground units that you could draw from no matter where in your emepire you were deploying the troops. This won't be the case in FO then? I mean troops will be deployed to the planet on which they are built, correct?

This brings up another possibility. Troops could be built on one planet but deployed to another, much in the same way as ships could get deployed to another system. It also wouldn't require a whole lot of microing troops because you would be taking your more experienced troopsto the front line all of the time anyways.

I like the way MOO3 did its experience gaining. Your troops start out as recruits and over time, even if they aren't used, get promoted to trained. To get more experience than that, they have to go into combat. Doing troops this way in FO along with the deployment means you don't have to have troops on every planet and as long as you keep moving and using your more experienced troops, they will stay near the front lines nad they will keep their experience.

[Impaler]

Good Points their Ablaze. I think its good to reflect the cost of distant operations but I would fold thouse effects into the Supply system. I am not entirly shure how, if or when Supply will be implemented but it should definatly reflect inefficencies of long supply lines (indeed thats the main reason of having a supply system). If we take that it as an Assumption that the Supply system will produce the desired penalties for distance all we need to do for Fleets and Garrison tropps is desided when and how mutch Supply they need.

In that context their should be 2 facilites the "Training Grounds" that makes and Maintanes Cadets and the "Barracks" that acts to eleviate all supply requirments for a ground unit and alows the building of troops. When you invade a planet most or all pre-existing Barracks are Destroyed and the Garrison will require lots of outside Supply. Once new Barracks are built and local mantance is sufficient for them the Supply requirments will drop. Likewise ships in MothBall will disgorge their Cadets back into the Pool and Un-Mothballing them consumes Cadets. Lastly their could be a way to convet Cadets back into Civilians and add them to a planets populatiion (this is ofcores only if making them consumes pop in the first place)

I think Ranos troop movment idea is also valuable. Imperialism used an "Internal Transport Pool" which serves both from raw-material and food transport (like Freighters in Moo2) but also took the burdon of troop transport as well. Unfortunatly it didn't model distance and all deliveries were instantanious. Significant improvment on this model is definatly possible and if done well it can kill a whole flock of birds with one stone by moving Supplies, Population and anything else we need to move around. My wish is for a "Convoy" centered aproatch inwhich fleets of Freighters are abstracted into a 2 way "Pipe" between 2 system and the player adjust the mix of things moving along the pipe from the Galaxy screen.

[Prokonsul Piotrus]

I think we can allow some troops to be deployed directly to all planets, based on their population/infrastructure rating.

However, majority of the troops should be deployable only to troop equivalent of spaceyards (military academy special or fluff sth). The military academy special would represent the place where troops are trained and equipped and this is were majority of those Caded Pool forces would be deployable. From there, they can be transported via transport ships (and other fluff stuff) to other places and stationed there.

Troops deployed directly to a planet (without going through military base and assuming this planet doesn't have this special) would represent quickly trained militia and such, and could have additional penalties.

Bascially I think we can solve the ground army problems looking at the things we have agreed with spaceship construction and deployment - no need to invent an entirely new and separate system when we have one already in place.

I definelty like the global empire caded pool idea. It could be influenced by some techs, racial picks and goverment choice, it should change slowly over time, drain economy the bigger it gets and be responsible for player's ability to increase/replenish losses in ground forces and ship crews.

[iamrobk]

We are threading on new and dangerous grounds here - I dont recall any good solution for this problem in older games.

We have to answer few questions first:

1. Should 'military draft' ratio affect
a) population
b) economy
c) happiness

2. Should 'military draft' be based on:
a) global/empire population
b) planet near shipyard/army base build up population
c) tech level
d) race pics

3. Should 'army draft' be same or saparate from 'navy draft'?

4. Should recruit quality matter for battle purposes and/or should army units/crew gain experience?

1. I think it should be mainly population, but the economy and happiness level should be able to sway the percentage. For example, you set your draft percent to be like 10%. However, your economy and general happiness level are pretty bad, so ther actual percenttage is like 8%. You could always set it higher, but your happiness level will go down a lot.
2. A, definately.
3. I think that just a "military draft" pool of soldiers would be best. Keeps the game simple enough. Having more than onme pool or soldiers to work with would probably be TOO complicated IMO.
4. I think that you should be able to build military academys, which would increase the base stats of your soldiers. When they graduate and are assigned to ships/army units/whatevers, the average skill level of your troops is taken, and that ship or whatever is given that ranking. From what point on, individual statistics are discarded, but the ship as a whole can still get better.

[Ablaze]

That could work impaler. It's very freeorion-esque.

[utilae]

Nice idea Impaler, cadets as a resource, etc is cool. I support it.

[Kharagh]

Me, too, I like the whole cadet system very much.
Good idea there, Impaler.

@ iamrobk

4. I think that you should be able to build military academys, which would increase the base stats of your soldiers. When they graduate and are assigned to ships/army units/whatevers, the average skill level of your troops is taken, and that ship or whatever is given that ranking. From what point on, individual statistics are discarded, but the ship as a whole can still get better.

If you mothball the ship, the crew will go back to the pool, right?

What if you activate the ship again? Will you get back your expierienced troops, or will your ship be "green" once again?

[iamrobk]

Me, too, I like the whole cadet system very much.
Good idea there, Impaler.

@ iamrobk

4. I think that you should be able to build military academys, which would increase the base stats of your soldiers. When they graduate and are assigned to ships/army units/whatevers, the average skill level of your troops is taken, and that ship or whatever is given that ranking. From what point on, individual statistics are discarded, but the ship as a whole can still get better.

If you mothball the ship, the crew will go back to the pool, right?

What if you activate the ship again? Will you get back your expierienced troops, or will your ship be "green" once again?

Whatever is taken from the pool is what the ship would be. Maybe different settings, like recruits only, or veterans first, or whatever.

[Kharagh]

I like the idea about using differrent settings. That way you could decide which ships to put your expierienced crews on.

Without this option, ppl would probably never mothball their expierienced ships anyway.

We could implement a general transfer crew feature in the game. Being able to move your expirienced destroyer crew to your shiny new battleship sounds great.

[Bastian-Bux]

But then you need "experience watering down". So if you move a crew, it should part of its exp.

If we want an easy way, we make it dependant on "prize" of the ships only. This assumes that more expensive ships are either bigger (meaning the old crew forms part of a much larger, inexperienced crew), or newer (meaning the crew as to adapt to new systems). Thats KISS and also avoids the problem of very old ships with highly experienced crews.

As an example: your frigate "Old Bucket", worth 10.000 production units, has a highly experienced crew with 20.000 exp points. Now you need a crew for your new 100.000 PU cruiser "Shiny Star". You promote the crew of "Old Bucket" to officers, and transfer them to "Shiny Star", where lotsa green cadets wait for them. So even if the commanding officers of "Shiny Star" are experienced guys and gals, the majority of the crew is inexperienced. This lowers the generall experience of the "Shiny Stars" crew to 10.000*20.000/100.000 = 2.000. Not extremely good, but at least something.
PS: It might have been wiser to transfer "Old Buckets Crew" to the "New Bucket" 12.500 PU frigate. There they would serve with 16.000 exp.