Ground combat and Squad size

[Sathra]

Did it in my mod. Not really more tactical most of the time (though there are a ton of places where you're up against 2 or more aliens in cover), but its pretty fun for me.

[mangalores]

it would make an interesting change:-

"Sir! we've cracked the alenuim pulse core technology! We can build advanced ships...but it'll cost you some space."

It would feel completely wrong to have your advanced alien tech result in a decrease in transport capacity. You'd pretty much never use anything other than the starting dropship then.

If it's far faster, longer range and cannot be easily intercepted by enemy fighters? Transport size should be the last thing that is affected by technology. Building things bigger isn't really hard techwise, just slab a couple of more engines on it (just look at how our forefathers solved this stuff), building them small is where you need brains. And we are not talking about any engineering limits that are really broken by trying to transport 8-20 guys, the guys are the least of the problem to stuff into the craft. Weapons, engines and fuel is because you need many times more the weight of that compared to squishy human meat.

I didn't say the transports need to be smaller, I said in pretty much every strategy game the numbers of bad troops _you need_ matter more in the start than elite troops in the end (at least if the game implies combat from the getgo and no building phase). The later usually are always fewer and can usually apply far more force than anything else that came early on. More importantly the late elites usually come when a big backbone to produce cheap or medium troops is there and they are not worth building anymore.

For me the freedom to go high or low on numbers is an issue of tactical flavour. Punish it with disadvantages or make it less efficient or restrict what else can go on the transport craft but allow the player to do it or explain why the craft is half empty but can carry an armored car that is easily heavier than the number of people that could go in its holding space.

Well, when we'd think realistically a transport plane would bring the troops to the nearest military base and only the last few hundred miles are then covered by helicoptre. One might kind of simulate that by making a plane fly to the closest city of the map to the mission site and then converting to the heli.

One might remove the problem of limited range of the chinook though because that's how troops move over the globe today. Sent them via the normal infrastructure and airports and only put them on the combat crafts in the theatre.

It would completely shoot the current system though so I don't think it'd be worth it.

Edited June 13, 2013 by mangalores