Infantry Bonuses Based on Species

Suggestions
1

I’d like to suggest a feature that applies specifically to infantry ground forces.

Currently, infantry units don’t specify which species they are composed of. I think it would add depth if, in the Ground Unit Design tab, there were a dropdown menu allowing you to select the race of the troopers. By default, this would be your starting race.

After performing an autopsy on an alien species, that race would become available for selection when designing infantry units. Choosing a race would consume 1 population unit of that species from the colony where the training facility is located. While 1 population in Aurora is not a significant cost, this requirement would ensure that you actually have a population available to recruit from (i.e., it cannot be zero).

Reasoning

Both historically and in science fiction, empires have often recruited from distant populations. Examples include Gurkhas and sepoys in the Birtish Empire, Roman auxilia, or species like the Kroot in Warhammer 40k.

Proposed Mechanics

Each race could have randomly generated traits (buffs or debuffs) at the start of the game. These traits would only be revealed after conducting an autopsy and would apply exclusively to infantry units. Humans would remain unchanged as the baseline.

Some example traits (might not be feasible in actual code):

  • Strong/Weak Exoskeleton → armor bonus/penalty

  • Lightweight → reduced logistical weight

  • Tunneler → entrenchment bonus

  • Frail → armor penalty

  • Remote Viewing → bombardment bonus

  • Intimidating → unrest reduction

  • Robotic → No morale loss

Gameplay Impact

This system would encourage players to seek out and utilize specific populations for different roles. You might discover a race that excels in multiple areas, or one that is highly specialized (e.g.,defensive infantry, police units, etc.). Some species might be simply terrible for infantry roles like a squishy, amoeba-looking species.

Overall, this would add both variety and a minor strategic challenge. A player might want to recruit from a specific population, but if that species is located in a distant system, they would need to either transport a portion of that population to a core world (e.g., Earth) or establish and use training facilities locally. To make the challenge not trivial I would probably also make it so the population is 100% integrated so you can’t recruit from a freshly conquered planet.

6 Likes
2

Some calculations.

  • You need 1m population to maintain 1 Ground Force Construction Complex.
  • 1m PWL infantry costs 60k BP.
  • 1 GFCC have up to 2k BP/Year (base is 250 as I remember).
  • So in 30 (240) years, I think your population will be able to cover these expenses several times.

So it doesn’t make much sense to add these costs.

But otherwise, the idea is very interesting. It will allow you to send xenos not only to Labor Camps. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
Quick Suggestions
3

Thank you. I actually agree with you, the constraint was mostly just to check if you actually have the xeno population necessary to train the unit on that planet.

4

Very intriguing proposal! The exact numbers can be figured out later, the restriction is obviously what is needed. I’m in support for anything that makes multi-species empires more viable & fun!

1 Like
5

Here’s the kicker: traits aside, it’s already a thing, it’s just not displayed in the game. I would’ve never found out had I not tried to research the absolutely abysmal performance of some of my armies: turns out there is a collumn for GU species in the DB, and these were recruited on a minor NPR homeworld I’d conquered early on, and that race had very small gravity tolerances compared to humans, explaining their underperformance on certain worlds where humans would fight normally. So the groundwork is there, it just should be displayed in the game to avoid confusion.

I like the notion of GU’s having population costs, but this presents a problem as the game is intentionally ambiguous on how many men does a single infantry unit represent (with 5 tons, it could either be a single guy with all his ammunition and provisions, or a squad?). The easy way is to expose it as a setting so the player could choose his base infantry unit size. But then we’d also need a setting for vehicle crews?

As for the traits themselves, I’m not sure, this screams Stellaris to me and will leed to obvious clashes with character portraits unless a whole lot of development goes into some sort of a tag system. We already have racial characteristics like determination and xenophobia, which could affect morale and unrest reduction respectively, the population density modifier could affect logistical size, and the factory production modifier is begging to be split into a bonus for factories proper and a bonus for mines, with the latter representing physical strength that could affect all sorts of military-related stuff.

1 Like
6

Wow, I had no idea unit species was already in the code, that’s really interesting. Does this apply also to racial armor/weapon strength? I might run the test too.

I’ve never played Stellaris though, so I’m not totally sure what you mean by the character portraits part, could you clarify?

Also, I think you might be going a bit more into the technical side than I was. I was thinking more along the lines of the bonuses in the ground unit design section, like jungle warfare capability or low-gravity warfare. Since some of those are already infantry-specific, I was imagining something similar, but innate to each species. So once you select the species that the design is intented for, you’d see the bonuses/debuffs displayed as something like “race-specific bonuses”

7

In Stellaris and in Paradox games in general, there are traits with stat modifiers absolutely everywhere. But with species, they have the luxury of enough development man-hours design whole portrait packs and match them to the traits available, so you’d mostly meet robots that look like robots etc. And most impactful racial traits (like being robotic) have many game mechanics associated with them.

Tacking a similar system on top of the current Aurora portrait system is bound to result in winged tunnelers, crawling fliers and frail ogres. I might be overestimating the hassle of assigning each existing portrait to a pool of available traits (and allowing users to handle new portraits, should they wish to add them) but it still seems to me that copying the trait system is not the path to take here. Aurora is distinct in how every racial attribute is a quantifiable modifier, so why call a species “strong” or “enduring” because it has a trait when you can call it that because it has high gravity tolerance?

1 Like
8

Im a little confused about this because all of your suggested traits can be emulated with drones, or other equipment. Furthermore, currently, a low tech tank can be blown up by a high tech infantry. Your suggestion would imply that species traits can have impact on the same scale.

E.g. Natural exoskeletons are gonna be like paper compared to the simplest trans-newtonian weapon. Lightweight dosent matter cause its mostly equipment that weighs anything; the soldiers themselves weight so little that it isnt even accounted for. Remote viewing is just drones. Intimidation can be achieved with decorative equipment, face masks etc.

I would suggest instead, that the traits be limited to things like morale or training cost. Certain species have higher morale, and aliens are cheaper to train and maintain ground forces for. Robots are interesting, but I dont know how much Steve believes in the “promise” of AGI, so they might be hard to sell as anything but remote controlled, but then, the operators can still lose morale.

As for stellaris, personally, I think species traits are not realistic at all. Stellaris is purely a power fantasy game imo.