Matrix Games Forums

At the moment the militia system basically breaks down entirely once you leave the early-game. This is due to the strength of the factors reducing militancy in settlements combined with the weakness of those factors increasing it. However at the point that the inevitable militancy crash occurs, you often have large militias serving you. Because of the importance of things like concentric attacks and just the holding of space, these militia units remain an asset for a long time after the militia has effectively been phased out.

The problem is that they tend to get depleted but at the same time contain very experienced troops, so merely disbanding them once they turn into mere bands is kind of a waste of talent. They are very much a non-renewable resource and that is because while you could temporerily raise militancy to reinforce them, the strategems to do so are expensive, difficult and weak.

That is why I propose we have a strategem, with a moderate cost in money and/or IP that allows us to bypass the normal process of militia reinforcement and restore a depleted militia unit to full strength. At the same time the same strategem upgrades/replaces existing troops in the militia unit to the latest models available to militia at the present time, when possible. The manpower for the replacements is instantly taken from the militia's place of origin, regardless of whom controls it (so you can reinforce militia from enemy controlled settlements), but if there simply isn't a place of origin like with aliens or free folk the strategem still works, conjuring the manpower out of thin air.

Some players however might not want militia at all, but simply wish to make use of the experienced troops of the militia. Thus we could also have an integrate militia strategem, which disbands the militia unit but sends all of it's troops and equipment to the SHQ, with all their experience, where they can then be sent as reinforcements or used to create new regular army units outright.

heya many people don't know this, but you can actually transfer regular sub-units *in* to a militia unit.

The player can do this in the field by stacking with regulars and transferring, or by moving the Militia unit to the SHQ, and transferring. Once a regular, player-built sub-unit is transferred in to a militia formation, it becomes marked as 'Militia" and can't go back to being regular. So its a one way trip.

Militia sub-units can't be upgraded, but the experience from those older, grizzled lets say, but poorly kitted platoons will be transferred within the unit formation, between sub-units of the same type (eg. infantry, buggy, artillery). So the experience you talk about is not entirely wasted, its just banked on soldiers with older arms and armour.

This how I use Militia, and just as you say, they are extremely useful. However, keeping a Militia formation somewhat up-to-date can mean quite a lot of juggling. Fun, building the Militia Motherships and Coast Guard detachments, but it needs planning.

I too have noticed the usefulness of militia waines in game. But the experiance is wanted.

I am wonderin gif a better way to manage this in game into the future is maning the concript resouce that you draw from cities catogorised and controlled by a new 'training' council. Where you can balance between training the pool of resource to make starting units more experianced and recycling of manpower in units on the map?

Not quite sure how you would code this, but making the pool have tiers of experiance might work:

Green 0-25
Seasoned 25-50
Vets 50-75
Elites 75-100

Another idea I just had might be to have the militia be paid a wage by the zone governor out of the private economy. This wage however is based upon the maximum size of the militia, not its present size.

The militia unit buys manpower from the main pool via a random event and also buys upgrades for itself in the same way. The militia pays the player to upgrade itself, this is quite separate from the regular militancy based stuff. Militancy gets them stuff and they pay the player using their zones money to upgrade/replace that stuff.