Colonial forces

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way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
Human: Yes

Colonial forces

Post by way2co0l »

I'm currently watching "The Great War" youtube series, and it brought this point to mind for me. How will colonial forces be represented? I'll confess, I haven't really given the 36 campaign a real playthrough, so while I imagine current plans are for it to work similarly, I'm not entirely positive how they behave in that context.

Indian troops for example were famously used in both wars, but looking at the 36 map, I see them listed as a colony with no military fabrication. Obviously colonies can't construct those facilities without them being turned over to the parent nation, which makes me ask the question. They're unable to construct military equipment or troops for themselves, which means they will be dependent on equipment being given to them in order to field any kind of force. As a colony, they can't negotiate with any country other than their parent nation, so England would be the only one that can give them this equipment. But I'm unsure if the ai is currently programmed to do so? That's a tremendous amount of manpower that is going unused and limiting the forces England can potentially bring into the conflict. I feel like a colonial nation really should be able to have more control over their colonial territories, maybe even giving them access to some of their colonial military manpower, even something like 10%.

Though if you do implement some of the ideas mentioned in my other posts, England would probably be eager to sell its old equipment to its colonial territories for them to make use of, but that would really only occur once England herself already has a surplus of personal equipment so that really doesn't help arm her colonial territories very well, and they are completely incapable of arming themselves. And I think the manpower is quite essential to be represented and available in this kind of war, especially considering the key roles these forces played in these conflicts.

Thinking through it, I can't think of an easy solution to this. The simplest solution would be to give the parent nation a percentage of their military manpower as said before, and for military losses to population to be distributed among the colonies based on their population. The math would get a little complicated, but it could be done, and it's the best option I can currently think of that would likely be possible within the game engine.

Edit: Another option would be to change the limitation for military fabrication construction limit within colonies. Currently, any military facility construction within a colony results in the hex ownership being given to the parent country which prevents colonies from fielding forces of their own unless those forces are given to them. As far as I'm aware, the AI itself will never build military facilities in their own colonies, so this only effects human players. As such, I'd say it'd be best to allow colonies to build military fabs (though the rules for AI fab construction should be better defined and limited, a topic for another discussion) and the player should be given a toggle option when building within a colony's territory whether they want to usurp control of the hex in the process, or if they want the colonial nation to remain in control of it. While we're at it, please make it possible for the parent nation to repair damaged buildings in their colonies, because colonies will NEVER repair them otherwise as they are unable to stockpile resources to do so.

Edit 2: One potential complication for this will be the expense to the colony, because currently the colony gives the parent nation all of their surplus for everything, unable to stock resources or to sell any of it for it's own profit to be used for these things. But honestly, I think that's a good thing as it would limit the size of the forces they could field (working under the assumption of my other military maintenance budget ideas). The only real spendable income available to a colony comes from taxing their population, and expenses deducted before they contribute their excess to their parent nation which means larger and richer colonies with financial surpluses that aren't being spent on social spending are the ones that would be able to build any meaningful forces to contribute to the conflict. England's major colonies would be able to contribute as a result, while most of the other minor colonies in the world would be unable to contribute anything of note. Sounds like the best option to me.
SGTscuba
General
Posts: 2544
Joined: Dec 08 2007
Location: Tipton, UK

Re: Colonial forces

Post by SGTscuba »

This would be really handy and is what I do when I occasionally have colonies. It would also get around the annoying issue of the Ai building them in colonies themselves which then increases my build cap without mg permission even though the Ai isn't supposed to be able go build anything for me!
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