Improving the Battle Group System

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Tnarg
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Improving the Battle Group System

Post by Tnarg »

I would like to see the AI/Player use the battle group function, but mostly for creating stacks of combined arms forces. It is painful to see a countries AI send infantry units one by one to get trampled by a larger force. Likewise, it is horrific to see a massive horde of hundreds of units being mass selected and targeted into a one hex click.

What I love about SR over HOIV is that I can still break down my attacks down to the battalion unit level; however, currently it is a tedious process to build my own battlegroups and managing them. But once built it is nice to direct them specifically where i need them without mass selecting hundreds of units and point and click to one hex. This brigade will move here, this brigade will move here, this brigade pincer over there, this brigade will spear head here avoiding other units. That division will set up a defensive line in this area. And they automatically move in formation (slowest unit speed...unless deselected for a spearhead thrust). All the while avoiding the one unit trickle or 100 unit unrealistic doom stack.

Battle Groups could be templates the ai/player utilizes to form stacks of combined arms units. These templates could be very simple generic groups organized into brigade or division sizes. The templates available would be determined by the size of a country's forces, technology (as far as doctrine researched), and determined by assessing a neighbors forces observed or intel gathered force strength. I mentioned ELINT and Electronic warfare missions in another post as a way to gather this information.

Generic Battle Groups could be as simple as: (Every country has this research and available to use and would divide units up depending on force size, Smaller countries would focus on brigades, larger would focus on divisions, and fill niche gaps with brigades.)
Infantry Brigade - 3 Infantry Units, 1 Armor, 1 Recon, 1 Anti-tank, 1 Artillery, 1 AA, and 1 Supply Truck
Armor Brigade - 3 Armor Units, 1 Infantry, 1 Recon, 1 Artillery, 1 AA, and 1 Supply Truck
Airborne Bridge - 3 Airborne Units, 1 Airborne Recon, 1 Airborne Artillery, 1 Airborne AA
Naval Infantry Brigade - 3 Naval Infantry or Amphibious Tag Infantry, 1 Amphibious Armor, 1 Amphibious Recon, 1 Amphibious Artillery, 1 Amphibious AA
Infantry Division - 9 Infantry Units, 1 Combat Engineer, 3 Armor Units, 1 Recon, 1 Anti-tank, 3 Artillery, 2 AA, 3 Supply Trucks
Armor Division ...
Airborne Division ....
Naval Infantry Division ...

Country Specific Battle Groups:(the basics like infantry brigade, armor brigade, infantry division, armor division mentioned above would be available to each country, but would have a unique force structure, as is the case with differences between Western and Eastern force structure doctrines. Further types of brigades or divisions could be researched and then a template would become available, check the link below to see how this could be elaborated on.

I have some of the major countries such as the US, Russia, and China organized into battle groups based off of "close" approximations or current or 2030 doctrine plans. I would be happy to do other major countries, as well I am sure there are many modders out there that have a favorite country too they would like to research. The link below will direct you to a collection I have already.

https://discordapp.com/channels/1005526 ... 0175772822

The ai/player would select the battle group formation, choose a type of battlegroup (infantry brigade, armor brigade, airborne division) and then units would be drawn from reserve to form these battles groups. If a unit is destroyed in a battlegroup, an reserve unit would automatically be drawn from reserve and fill its slot. Also, maybe there is a way that the ai would automatically place armor and infantry units up front, and the more squishy units in the rear when attacking or defending.

This could be done with Naval Units as suggested in another thread as well.

Be really cool if current force structure is utilized, so for example Battle group 1 would show up as US 1st Armored Division, 15th battle group would be US 82nd Airborne Division, 58th battle group would be US 3rd Carrier Strike Group. And this could be editable of course. If this way down the road I understand, that is a lot of research, but again modders could fill this pretty quick.

Again the big idea behind this is that the AI/player would send brigade or division sized combined arms forces rather than than trickles of single units or massive doom stack hordes. More opportunity for strategy and realistic deployment and use of units!

Finally, with battle groups organized into brigades and divisions, its only natural to have some sort of command system to enhance this.

Currently I use Corps and Armies as battle groups where I keep all of my long range artillery, missile systems and specialized assets such as more engineers, support units, helicopters, electronic and cyber warfare. By doing this I can easily locate them and use them accordingly where i need them.

A command unit could improve unit efficiency over a specific range. Brigade Command unit short 4 hex range largest boost to efficiency, Division Command unit 8 hex range large boost to efficiency, Corps Command Unit 16 hex range, medium boost to efficiency, Army Command Unit 32 hex range low boost to efficiency. Everything linked in a command structure would stack. So for example a Division by itself is highly efficient , but a Division > Corps > Army = Extremely Efficient. Versus 100's of units organized into one large army with no lower subordinates is a cluster f#$% in efficiency.
Hullu Hevonen
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Re: Improving the Battle Group System

Post by Hullu Hevonen »

If I remember correctly you could have 7 units per hex, unless using entrenchment or similar. One idea would be to have some hard limit on how many units can enter per hex, similar to combat width in Hoi4. Then teach the AI to stack properly, according to templates and maybe have a rudimentary GUI for the player to build and edit templates. Though I suspect I'm too old school to fully embrace giving the AI control of my templates, even in Hoi4 I manually control every division, no matter the country. But the option should imo should be there and the ability to maybe assign different AI priorities etc. for those who hate micro managing.
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