Balancing of forces in Invasion

  1. 8 years ago

    How is the force balancing best set up when running Invasion vs Occupation AI Commanders?
    I have Blufor starting in a single custom objective at the southern tip of Stratis set to Invasion. Opfor are set to Occupation and have 90% of the island.
    What I'm struggling with is how to set it up so that Blufor slowly push north. If they start with 100 units does this means that they'll take over the southern sections with the full strength of 100 units and slowly leave more and more behind, until they get to the point where they've spread the whole 100 over the taken objectives and then run out of steam?
    What I'd ideally like is for two infantry squads and a mechanized squad to assault enemy objectives, and for garrison units to spawn in behind to hold it while those three squads move on to the next one.

    If Blufor capture an objective within Opfor's TAOR will Blufor units then begin to spawn within it? Or do Opfor units just stop spawning there until they retake it?

    I don't really want a situation where Blufor steamroll over Opfor in the south, but eventually both sides reach stalemate in the middle as the unit numbers actively fighting reach parity. I'm looking for a situation where Blufor have a very slight advantage at all points and player intervention is needed to push the fight forward.

  2. Friznit

    3 Aug 2015 Administrator

    You can't be all that specific with ALiVE. It's designed to be a bit "fuzzy" so no outcome is ever exactly the same. Your best bet would be to use a relatively small starting force set to Invasion so they us the majority of available groups to advance and seize objectives (say a company of mech inf) with a Logistics module set to Dynamic, so they receive more battle casualty replacements as they capture objectives.

    Start OPFOR off with a fairly strong force (battalion+ of mech inf) on Occupy and give him a pretty large Logistics force pool so he can replace his losses easily to begin with but will eventually run out.

  3. Oh I know ALiVE is heavily randomised, it's what attracted me to it in the first place.
    My original hope for OFP was for it to have a Falcon 4.0 style dynamic campaign, and ALiVE is the closest thing to replicating that.

    What I'm wondering is this.

    I know a specific answer is not possible really because it wouldn't work exactly like this, but as a hypothetical I'd like to know how this would play out:
    Two squads with an Invasion commander assault an objective and take it. The commander assigns one group to garrison the objective as defenders.
    Will a third squad be spawned to join with the mobile squad to form another two-group unit to attack further objectives, or would there now be only one squad available to attack?
    Or do the two squads retain their attacking role and a third is spawned to act as defenders for the taken objective?

    If I have an Opfor Occupation force of 400 spread over a third of Altis and a Blufor invasion force of 100 spawned only in one small area with a single objective, will the invasion force be able to progressively capture territory as long as reinforcements keep coming, or will they stop attacking as soon as they've captured the amount of territory that the force of 100 can hold, with replacements only coming in for dead units, retaining the overall size of 100?

    I know these might seem like vague questions, but I'm trying to get a feel for how I can guide the progression of a scenario. I'm wanting there to be a long-running battle with Blufor slowly taking territory piece by piece. I'm trying to create a main effort that players can contribute to in whatever way they wish and I need to work out how to balance unit sizes and composition in order to achieve this without it either ending in a quick decisive battle, or fizzling out into stalemate.

  4. Friznit

    7 Aug 2015 Administrator
    Edited 8 years ago by Friznit

    ALiVE is semi random. It's actually quite predictable if you do some battlefield analysis, although we've just added a slight randomisation to the AI Commander's choice of next Objective to mix things up a little.

    1. Nothing is magically spawned after mission start, so the Commander would only have one group left to attack in your first scenario (and therefore he would go defensive) until such time as he can find reinforcement from elsewhere on the map. The exception is new units spawned as Battle Casualty Replacements at the Logistics HQ (they have to start somewhere!) and CQB units when you approach an occupied town, if you use those modules.

    2. Military Logistics delivers Battle Casualty Replacements, not Reinforcements, so they will only top up to the original starting ORBAT of 100 groups. However, on Invasion mode the Military AI Commander only leaves one or two groups in defence and so 100 groups can takes a lot of Objectives before running out of steam. Players can request Reinforcements (additional units over and above the starting level for the AI Commander) using the Player Combat Logistics console, and they will come from the same Force Pool as the BCRs.

    Setting a Dynamic Logistics Force Pool for OPFOR could be one way to achieve the effect you are after. As BLUFOR capture more objectives, OPFOR will receive progressively fewer BCR's to the point where BLUFOR will have the upper hand.

  5. So BCRs are limited to the starting group number and are the units that parachute in at the HQ. So what effect does setting the force pool to dynamic have? Would the BCRs not just replace killed units up to the levels of 100 and 400 respectively and keep them there until the pools run out? Perhaps I've missed something here, but I don't see what difference the number of objectives held by either side would make if they are spawned at the HQ up to the predefined level. Wouldn't this mean the Blufor always get reinforced up to 100 and Opfor to 400?

    I was assuming that the sizes were individual units, so a company (100) would be 100 men or roughly 10 infantry squads. I would have thought that these would run out pretty quickly, as if only one squad is left at each objective you'd only have 50 mobile units left to attack once 5 objectives have been taken.

    In invasion mode does every objective get defenders assigned, or is it only the most forward objectives?

  6. Friznit

    8 Aug 2015 Administrator

    BCRs are taken from the Force Pool. So if the starting Force Pool is Fixed at 100, you can get 100 replacement groups before running out of replacements completely. If the Force Pool is Dynamic, it will increase as you capture objectives. So for example you could give BLUFOR a fairly low Force Pool to start with, which will restrict the number of BCR's he gets and prevent him steam rolling too fast. Once he's captured a few objectives, perhaps with player support to ease the way, he'll get more added to the Force Pool and can now request BCR's again (though still only up to the max number of groups he started with).

    You're correct on the indicative Placement sizes, though they are a rough guide only because there's a fair amount of fuzziness built in. If you plonk a Company level Placement down in a fairly large TAOR with Debug on and show Profile debug, you should get an idea of how many Objectives they can hold.

    The AI Commander will always defend Objectives, regardless of which mode he's in, but the number change. From the wiki. groups used as follows:

    Invasion: 4 Attack, 1 Reserve, 2 Defend
    Occupation: 4 Attack, 1 Reserve, 5 Defend

  7. So the Force Pool number is groups not individual units, and the unit placement number is individual units?

    I think I might have found what I'm looking for.
    I've currently got a Blufor TAOR that is 1/4th the size of the Opfor one, both are set to spawn a Light Inf company of 100. With both sides set to dynamic Force Pool I can see Opfor have spawned about 60 groups all through their large TAOR, but Blufor have 10 groups spread over their much smaller TAOR.
    As Blufor capture parts of Opfor's area, will they then spawn in more groups as Opfor can spawn in less groups?

    If so then I think this is my solution. I thought that Opfor would need Light Inf 400 and Blufor Light Inf 100 to balance it out, but if this means that Blufor get more groups as they take territory then it'll do exactly what I want.

 

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