So, I’m starting to get some decent sized colonies. I am trying to figure out how much fleet vs. ground based protection the colony wants.
eg:
Protection required / Actual : 672 / 588
Police Strength / Resistance : 2577 / 688
Unrest reduction: 374%
I know there’s a lot of overkill on the ground forces as far as the population cares about, but should I be adding more fleet protection (Only relating to how the population feels. I understand actual requirements will vary)
More Dakka is always good. Build more ships if your economy can handle it, and always have enough troops (with STOs if you can) on your important colonies, especially if patrols can’t always be in system, to at least slow an invasion.
My current playthrough just hit 10 years and my current home fleet provides 4,075 PPV - and that’s with a good chunk out on an expedition. Roleplaying has kept me from massively investing into my military-industrial complex.
And the police strength of my army on Earth is currently providing 25,682 police strength, little over 4 million tons of pew pew. Will be shipping units to colonies soon.
So your colony is good for awhile with unrest, but always more Boom Boom is a good policy. Your level of police strength is instantly deleting any and all unrest generated by not having enough armed ships in system
Colonies do not require ground units at all. The only thing ground units do is reduce unrest that already exists (or prevent it from rising). If you have sufficient PPV, you don’t need ground units except for when unrest rises due to overcrowding or something like that.
That being said, you can get away with no PPV and only ground units as they will get rid of the no-protection unrest. Since you have almost enough PPV, the unrest increase you get will be pretty small, so you won’t need very many ground units to counter it.
Simply put, Police Strength and PPV are only needed to reduce the unrest of the colony. You can use both or only one of them.
If you use ships, it will allow you to intercept enemies in deep space and/or use missiles. PPV applyes to all colonies in the system. However, ships use MSP for maintenance, so you will need to organize its production.
If you are using Ground Forces, then you will need to create them for each colony separately. PWL Infantry are the best at this task - they are cheap (and weak) and you can create a lot of them. Police Strength is determined primarily by the number of units, not their quality (and PPV too - needs more weapon tonnage). Also, Ground Forces do not consume MSP, instead they consume Wealth. STOs also don’t consume MSP, so they can fire indefinitely, but they won’t be able to get close to the enemy on their own.
If you need to defend the system from enemies, using both ships and Ground Forces will be the best solution.