Change MG army from start option to light infantry

[fibol]

When doing a tech 3 start with starting army you get MG units. However without an established ammunition factory actually using these machineguns is a complete trap and waste of resources early thats probably hiting a bunch of new players in the face and giving more experienced players just a bit of annoying busywork of downgrading them at the start of every game.
Therefore I would suggest to give out light infantry formations instead, at least for tech 3 starts.

[Don_Kiyote]

Wait, tech 3 start already has Light Infantry brigades. Did I miss something?

Its true, players who are new to the ammunition mechanic may miscalculate. But actually I find the early game quite forgiving for ammunition, thanks to the private economy. Basically all you have to do is not attack, *all the time*, with machine guns.

[fibol]

If you choose to start at tech 3 with an army you get a machinegun infantry brigade. One of those battalions consumes 160 ammo on the attack, 96 on the defense. On the attack 120, three quarter of the total and on the defense even a full 83% of that is due to the two mg units, despite those doing only about (minor variation depending on model rolls) 20% of the offensive and 33% of the defensive firepower. In a situation where 10 ammo equals 1 metal and IP and you produce only 60 of each per turn that is an absolutely unacceptable relation.
You and me probably are fine with that, we just downgrade it to light infantry and go along, but I think the reaction for new players will tend to be "Alright, I got given this as starter, so I guess thats good for now and I will use it".
I am not sure what you mean with private economy here. As far as I know there is no private economy production for ammunition.

[Don_Kiyote]

I see. Thanks for clarifying. We play with some different settings. I choose 'militia only', so I was thinking about what formations were available to be built at the start, not which one you started with already built.

It seems like the regime in my game gains about 180 ammo a turn, passively, early game on this low-population world.

It could be a decent option is the set-up phase; LI rather than MG. The thing is, MG Brigade is way better than Light Infantry, and easier to play with too, tactically. Except for that ammo thing, given. But on a dangerous planet, an LI Brigade in the hands of an inexperienced player probably wouldn't last long. MGs can take a counter-attack, and as long as you sit still you're mostly okay, even against predator wildlife.

It is true that MGs use a tons of ammo though. Fun fact: Apparently a Maxim could fire continuously for days at a time, going through hundreds of thousands of rounds without ever jamming.

[fibol]

I think those 180 ammo you are getting are probably militia reimbursement? The thing where militia pays for its own equipment so you are passively gaining the ammo they consume back. Otherwise I am unsure where that ammo would come from?
You are correct that mg units are twice as deadly as light infantry on the defensive. But it costs 4 metal & IP to have one of those subunits fight one combat for 10 turns. You can get an entire basic light infantry subunit + 10 turns of combat for 2.5 meatl and 4.5 IP (hazard costs mess that up, on the other hand without envirosuit you can even get 2!). And since early on manpower is cheap you are way better off swarming out more light infantry than bringing expensive mg units. And with the default recruitment policy doing 2.5k a turn new players will probably have plenty of recruits to throw at a problem at the ready.
So I still think that machinegun units should not be the thing first shown to players.

[Don_Kiyote]

naturally

Thankfully there is more than one way to play the game. Did you say you recruit 2,500 population per turn? These are some very different game settings. I usually stick at 500 for the first 20 turns at least.

[fibol]

Oh not for long, only until I got my first 3 or 4 light infantry brigades. I find that I usually end up with that before I can get to industry anyway.
But the reason I brought that up is that thats the default amount your city is set to recruit. And I assume that having to tell your starting city to stop recruiting so much is probably not obvious to new players so I assume they'll have a good stockpile of recruits available.

[Don_Kiyote]

...thats the default amount your city is set to recruit.

2500 per turn is probably related to your starting setting too.

I play with high settings, so Militia Only/Tech 3/One Zone/Supreme Command only... and erm Extreme Difficulty (down one notch from the top), Slow tech, Large map. And usually pretty low pop worlds. Default or starting recruitment rate is only 500/turn on these settings. I'm not sure which setting affects the initial rate.

Having it high like that for a few turns can be a good move, though. Its better to have the numbers ready and waiting when you need them. Also, I think some worlds have waaaay more population than what I play on. The biggest force I've ever fielded is like 3 brigades. But the Formations scale up to... what are they, Corps and Division? And isn't a Division about 80,000 soldiers?

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In other issues, something which is much more mysterious and problematic for me just right now, is the Crime Syndicate. Just by-the-way, do you have any tricks for dealing with these guys?

[fibol]

Mea culpa, you are correct it is just 500 per turn. I was completely mislead by my memory having "Adjust recruitment down" as one of the routine automatic things to do on a new game, but thats just the recruitment bonus, while the recruitment numbers go up instead. I do still think that even with that light infantry are the better starter unit as the difference in performance is minor but the difference on industry demands is significant, but that part of my reasoning was flawed.
But yeah we do seem to play on very different settings, having a whole bunch of infantry brigades is pretty normal for me, even on the harshes death volcano worlds, and occasionally I do even have 1-3 infantry regiments. Divisions in SE are only doing about 12k infantry, but yeah never had those either.
My best recommendation for those additional story modules is "don't", I found them uninteresting, uninteractive and boring, so I unticked all of em. Maybe we should start a thread in the general area though, we are getting quite a bit side tracked?

[Don_Kiyote]

We are. Crime Syndicate questions should be in a new thread.
glhf