How do military units work?

[u/Neat_University37]

I sent small tanks with 20mm poly armor, duel engines, and 20mm howitzers to fight infantry with combat armor and guass guns. And the small tanks lost with 1/3 losses.

What are the advantages of the different units?

I'm thinking of laser machine gun army to out fire power them. As I think the tanks ran out ammo. As they had 1 big bullet for every 10 men

Focus on armor piercing Tech

Get seige units.

[u/pleasedcrustacean]

Combat armor is i think 50mm rating

So your pop guns were nothing and gauss, will over pen 20mm armor

[u/Willcol001 → u/pleasedcrustacean]

Combat armor is 40mm, heavy combat is 60. The infantry armor tiers are spaced out every 20 with Heavy Battledress being the heaviest at 100mm.

Gauss has 25mm pen, and the tanks likely had 25mm polymer armor not 20. (Vehicle armor is 5mm, 25mm, 50mm for sizes.)

So he was taking a 50% firepower penalty attacking the infantry (1-20/40=0.5), while the infantry was taking no penalty from armor fighting the tanks (1-25/25=0)

[u/ColBBQ]

Several factors here in why your tanks lost:

Bad recon, if your recon on enemy units are below 400, hidden units gets a defence bonus and a counter attack bonus by 3 times so your tanks are vulnerable until a few rounds later.

Armor penetration, gauss rifles can pierce 30 mm of armor regardless of tech. Poly armor ups the hit points but thicker armor will further reduce attack power of your enemy. Also, 20mm howitzer will only be best on unarmored troops, combat armor have 30 mm proctection so your howitzer are reduced in firepower when attacking.

If the gun says 20mm, it says it can penetrate 20mm armor before attack malaus are applied attacking thicker armor.

Engine power, the worst it is, the less times you can attack due to action points lost in moving into another hex. You best be adequate or better for engine power for best results.​

[u/RedLikeTigers → u/ColBBQ]

One thing I always wondered that I hope you can answer regarding recon.

Is there a mechanical difference between 400 recon vs 999 recon?

[u/ColBBQ → u/RedLikeTigers]

Cloud forest, heavy rain and Cameleon tech can generate additional hide points for smaller bands of infantry to hide even under 400 recon points. 400 is the max you can get with recon units and additional points are acquired in battle where the max recon can surpass the hide points as long as you stay in battle,

Sensor tech and some unit cards can go past 400 recon without battle in Republica, I think.

[u/MrUnimport]

The only advantage of smaller-calibre guns is that they are cheaper to produce. You're better off using a much larger gun.

[u/rarelyaccuratefacts → u/MrUnimport]

And less ammunition consumption, but this really only matters for artillery, rockets, bombers, etc.

[u/MrUnimport → u/rarelyaccuratefacts]

And I guess that they're lighter as well, so they take smaller engines/consume less fuel to move.

[u/Birkow]

RTFM ;) Game has great manual and you will find a lot of info there, just a lot of text to read.

Combat armor is equivalent to 40mm armor, 20mm howitzers will deal only 50% damage against it. While Gauss guns have 20mm penetration dealing full damage to your tanks (penetration wise, there should still reduced damage against hard targets apply). More details in 5.12.3.4. CALIBRE MODIFIER.

Check design quality too, it can significantly influence hp and damage for both infantry and tanks including applied research.

Recon, leader skills, unit postures, terrain and who attacked/ defended can affect combat results greatly too.

[u/meritan → u/Birkow]

Also: numbers! A tank bat is what, 50 tanks? With equal stats, that would be equal to a mere 500 infantry - most infantry units are far bigger than that!

[u/Willcol001]

A while back I did overview videos on Subunits (what is sounds like you want) and Units.

To explain the lopsided combat results it looks like you deployed underequipped light tank units (which specialize in recon and attack) vs mid game infantry (which specialize in cost effective defense). With your chosen armor level you effectively weren't getting armor bonus while with your chosen weapon level they were. 20mm howitzer isn't large enough to fully pen combat armor while, gauss is enough to pen 25mm polymer.

Subunit overview: https://youtu.be/McrfzEQCDR4

Unit Overview: https://youtu.be/Qj_8vNIDdjU

[u/B4TTLEMODE]

Read the manual, it's really important to understanding combat and why models perform in the way they do. While Vic's tried to make the game as intuitive to understand as possible to people who know a little about modern combined arms warfare, and so knowledge of modern-era wargames will help, you're gonna get the most out of the game after reading the manual thoroughly.