Army Take II

[miketr]

There was firm agreement from the rest of the mod team that initial costs were too low.  Also it was decided to move back to the old system of 2, 3, 4, etc for corps strength.

Digging In, units can choose to dig in, they become immobile but receive up to a 50% defensive bonus in combat, note it will take several weeks to fully dig in.

Some detail on how Forts are to work.  They represent 1/20th a Corps in terms of manpower so 2,500 men per citadel.  If you calculate out 20 citadels they would have equal to twice the combat strength of an equal tech level corps.  The in game effect of Citadels is they block line of supply / communication.  Its possible to surround a fortress in a province and move past it.  The problem is your units that move past it are now out of supply; this is because for fortress complex will control the key road / rail junctions in that province.  Also to mask a fortress complex requires you to equal the fortress effective manpower, not combat power you can use second line units if you want.  Plus any units that the defending player choose to leave behind to hide out in the fortress.

A defending player has the option as long as they have mobile units in support to contest movement and force you to fight them and the fortress till you either are defeated or you drive the defenders back into the fort or out of the province.

Siege Artillery:  Siege Artillery can only be used vs. dug in units or fortifications.  They have zero combat value in war of movement.  Also if siege artillery unit faces an older generation fort then there will be a combat multiplier.  Modern guns have habit of ripping apart outdated forts very quickly.

Naval Artillery on Land:  When moving naval guns over to land we are going to us a KISS.  Let us say that your land combat tech is 1905 Infantry which costs $27.5 a corps for 5 points of combat power.  Which gives you a 0.18 ratio of combat power to cash.  Now if you have $2 worth of naval artillery to move over AND it is of similar generation then it would get you 0.18 * $2 = 0.36  combat rating worth of Heavy / Rail Artillery.  This i a case of recycling more than anything else IMHO.  You have the guns already from some source and want to do something else with them.


http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/2750/armyv2.png

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/1430/fortv2.png

[Nobody]

Last time some people were unhappy about fractions. I didn't really mid that, but this time even I think that there are too many digits. If you want small numbers and small units, why not use those numbers for the smallest unit? You would have a lot less digits and fractions that way.

[Tanthalas]

the fractional values dont realy bother me, im more curious if a decision on our startup capital has been made (last I read it was either $1,000 or $1,500).  We have most of the general costs now (Drydocks, Slips, ships, Army baring anything else we have to purchase) has someone made a new spreadsheat for reports?

[Guinness]

The startup mechanics and some of the other gaps we need for startup I hope to publish as soon as tomorrow or sometime this weekend. I'm going to be on-call for work and at my inlaws (it's a twofer of unpleasantness!), so no absolute guarantees.

[Nobody]

I want to make one, but so far I felt what we had was too incomplete and so I haven't even start yet. And since I'm busy now I probably won't until August 18, but who knows. Soon enough for a September 1 start anyway.

[Korpen]

Some detail on how Forts are to work.  They represent 1/20th a Corps in terms of manpower so 2,500 men per citadel.

Hgn, just how large a single citadel are you thinking about? Or is a regiment of infantry included and other independent support included in that number?
Most forts I am familiar with (Boden and the Belgian ones) hade garrisons of around 3-600 men, including the close defence infantry.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=62cd5882-1e25-45f2-ad46-7291392c525e
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=d2883f4d-5ee4-4d1a-867c-edf5832c4c00

Reason I react is because there is quite a few cities with ports along the coastlines that could use a serious fort in the archipelagos to deter any amphibious assaults, but were a fort with 2500 men are massive overkill.

[Walter]

Most forts I am familiar with (Boden and the Belgian ones) hade garrisons of around 3-600 men, including the close defence infantry.

Was looking at the defence line around Amsterdam, which consists of 42 forts along a 135 kilometer long line around Amsterdam. With only a couple of forts a figure is given (~300 men) but IIRC from looking around with Google Earth a while back, I got the impression that they all look like this (making it fairly easy to follow the entire line around Amsterdam with Google Earth)...

... so with 42 forts of about 300 men each, you're looking at a total of 12600 men manning those forts (but that is a bit of a guess; German wiki on the defense line gives about 10000 men).

[Nobody]

I know the citadel Jülich, Fort Eben-Emael and the Maginot Line. Also heavily fortified cities like Maastricht. Not sure for how many people they were designed though.

Depending on how often we get new citadel and artillery techs, I would say forts should not receive additional mali against siege weapons that are only one generation ahead, the difference in strength should be sufficient.

[Walter]

Well, took a quick look, but could not find a figure to indicate how many troops were manning the Maastricht Defenses, but I did run across this scale model of the city's defenses...

[Guinness]

It's probably true that our manpower estimates per fort item are all wrong. We're trying to equate a fort of given size to an infantry unit of given size to evaluate their relative fighting power. A medium sized fort system, like that of the Crusnes Sector of the Maginot line, with 7 Ouvrages might equate to a 7 citadel "fort" in our system, but by my count would need something like 3000(ish) men to man, including it's outlying fortifications. It's probably very close to equivalent to a Division's fighting strength in our system, except that with no attacking power or mobility, all that fighting strength is concentrated in defense.

So what we probably need to get to is a system where Forts are more expensive to build than an infantry formation, but much less expensive to maintain, given they should have lots less mouths to feed. So we'll work on it. Right now a fort is 3x more expensive to build than it's equivalent infantry formation, but has the same cost to maintain. It's possible that number needs to be more like 5x more expensive to build, but 1/4 or 1/5 as expensive to maintain.

[Desertfox]

Will historical (pre-start date) forts in our territories be considered "free" (ie only need to pay for upkeep)?

[Guinness]

Probably not. If you want them to be current tech, you'll have had to pay their construction costs. If obsolete, we might grant a discount as we might do for older ships.

[Ithekro]

So really old forts?  More than 50 years old, maybe even 100 years old, will be cheaper, but not worth a lot against modern cannon...but still viable.  Even several hundred year old forts are viable against ground troops....if they don't have cannon.  And even then, small cannons can only do so much...and be destroyed by the forts cannons if not careful.

[Nobody]

What about medieval castles then? If recently found a map of the region were I live and was astound to find hundreds of castles all grouped around a very small and unimportant little river.

[TexanCowboy]

I'd like to see a cost seperate for light infantry; they shouldn't cost as much as heavy infantry due to smaller amount of supplies. But I'm willing to sacrifice that in the interests of KISS.